The category of case is disputative

Nbsp; 2. Number is a grammatical category of the English noun, which shows whether we speak of one substance or more than one. This grammatical meaning of the category of number is expressed by the opposition of two grammatical number forms: the singular form and the plural form. This opposition is true of many nouns: table - tables, man — men, etc. But if we compare such two phrases as four tables and four minutes we may see that in the first case we really deal with four separate substances. Thus, the opposition one table and four tables is that of the opposition of one and more than one. But in the case of four minutes it is rather a certain duration of time that we deal with but not four separate substances as in the case of tables. If we take such nouns as colour and colours or custom and customs the difference in lexical meaning develops to such a degree that it overshadows the grammatical meaning of the category of number. That is why we may say that in such cases we deal with the lexicalization of the grammatical meaning of the plural form, the result of which is the existence of two homonymous words. As for the grammatical opposition of the singular and the plural forms in English the form of the singular is a bare stem with the zero inflection whereas the plural number is built up by means of the inflection -s for the majority of cases. Compound nounsusually present difficulties in building up the plural form. A compound noun consists of two or more stems (root-morphemes). There are several ways of forming the plural number in compound nouns: 1. In compound nouns usually the head-noun takes the plural form (fellow-workers, school-mates, air-raids, editors-in-chief, brothers-in-law). 2. In compound nouns expressing generic notions the plural inflexion as a rule is added to the second element which is usually a noun (she-wolves, lady-birds, tom-cats, billy-goats, cock-sparrows). 3. In a compound noun consisting of a verb and a noun the plural inflection is added to a noun (pick-pockets). 4. a compound noun does not contain any noun, the plural is formed by adding the inflexion -s to the last word (forget-me-nots, merry-go-rounds, hold-alls, overalls). 5. If the first part of compound nouns is the word man or woman both stems are changed (men-servants, women-journalists). While speaking about the category of number we may also consider the nouns which have no usual two numbered forms, but mav be found in one of them. The nouns which have only the plural form are termed Pluralia Tantum, while the nouns which have only the singular form are called Singularia Tantum. Among the pluralia tantum there are nouns of two types: 1. Nouns denoting material objects consisting of two similar halves: scissors, trousers, spectacles, scales, eye-glasses, tongs. 2. Nouns which have collective meaning: concrete or abstract. a) Concrete: stairs, goods, eaves, slums, outskirts, tropics, memoirs, victuals, supplies, clothes, sweepings, slops, presents, parings, sweets, lodgings, suburbs. b) Abstract: holidays, tidings, goings-on, earnings, contents, wages (also wage), surroundings, doings, politics, tactics, gymnastics, athletics. The nouns of singular number (Singularia Tantum) are usually called uncountable or mass-nouns. Here belong: a) Concrete nouns: 1. Names of materials: water, milk, wine, snow, bread, beer, honey, paper, an; butter. 2. Some collective nouns -.foliage, leafage, shrubbery, brushwood, linen, machineiy, furniture, timber. b) Abstract nouns: friendship, joy, patriotism, love, kindness, weather, courage, information, progress, advice, confusion, noise, laughter, pleasure, beauty. 3. The category of gender. A classification of nouns, primarily according to sex; and secondarily according to some fancied or imputed quality associated with sex. Unlike the Romance languages, English has three genders for nouns and pronouns: masculine, feminine, and neuter. Generally, the English language uses natural gender rather than grammatical gender — that is, the gender of a word is usually based on its biology. The term “gender” is opposed to the term “sex” (пол). The first term (gender) is a pure grammatical term which deals with the grammatical expression of grammatical gender, i.e. the expression of masculine, feminine and neuter genders. The second word (sex) is used as a common word for both male and female. Thus, it is often used to denote biological notions. Speaking about the Modern English language we can say that the English nouns do not have a grammatical category of gender. It is because that the nouns do not have constant grammatical means to express the gender distinctions. Such a grammatical category is found in Russian which is one the most important grammatical phenomenon in this language “категория рода существительного – это несловоизменительная It becomes clear that in Russian we find three grammatical genders -masculine, feminine and neuter as well as in the personal pronouns in the 3rd person singular – он, она, оно. These pronouns, as a rule, replace nouns in accordance with their gender. Nouns denoting persons may be either masculine or feminine - according to the sex of the person usually denoted by them. Nouns denoting inanimate objects may be of masculine, feminine and neuter. If nouns in the nominative case (им. падеж) singular form have no special ending, and no soft sign (мягкий знак) at the end, they are included into the masculine gender: дом, семья. If in the same case and form they have the endings -a or -я (ручка, станция), they are included into the feminine gender. If nouns have the endings -o or -e (радио, замечание) they are in neutral gender. Nouns ending in "ь" (soft sign – мягкий знак) are either masculine (портфель - он) or feminine (тетрадь - она). In the English language we do not find such phenomenon. Because of this fact the Russian and the most other foreign grammarians think that English does not have the grammatical category of gender. “English has no gender: the nouns of English cannot be classified in terms of agreement with articles, adjectives (or verbs)” (38), In old English there were three genders with their own markers. B.A.Ilyish writes the following in this respect: "Three grammatical categories are represented in the OE nouns, just as in many other Germanic and Indo- European languages: gender, number and case. Of these three gender is a lexical-grammatical category, that is, every noun with all its forms belong to gender (masculine, feminine or neuter). But in Modern English the meaning of gender may be expressed by the help of different other means: 1. gender may be indicated by a change of words that is, by the help of lexic-semantic means: man – woman, cock (rooster) – hen, bull-cow, Arthur, Ann, Edgar, Helen and so on. 2. gender may be indicated by the addition of a word that is, by syntactic means examples: Grandfather – grandmother, manservant – maidservant, male cat – female cat or he cat – she cat and so on. 3. gender may be expressed by the use of suffixes, examples, host – hostess (хозяин – хозяйка), hero – heroine (герой - героиня), tiger – tigress (тигр - тигрица). There are opinions according to which these suffixes are morphological means, thus they are grammatical means and because of this fact one may consider that English has the grammatical category of gender. But it can hardly be accepted. There is a regular correspondence between English nouns and the personal pronouns in the third person singular he, she, it. But this correspondence is not equal with the one which is found in Russian. In the Russian language this correspondence is based on both the lexical-semantic and the grammatical aspects but in English it is based on only the lexical-semantic aspect, that is "he" is usually used to indicate real biological male sex, "she" indicates real biological female sex and “It” is used to indicate inanimate objects. It is important to remember that the pronouns he, she, may also be used with regard to inanimate nouns. Such a use of these pronouns is explained by the cultural and historical backgrounds and it has nothing to do with the grammatical expression of the meaning of gender. Examples: moon - she, ship - she, love - he and so on. Summing up the problem of gender in Modern English, it is important to say that: 1. gender is the grammatical distinction between; masculine, feminine and neuter; 2. the lexical - grammatical category of gender existed only in the OE period but in ME (middle English) 3. in Modern English we find only lexical-semantic meanings of gender, that is, the gender distinction is based on the semantic principle; 4. English has certain lexical and syntactic means to express a real biological sex. 4. Noun as a part of speech: Semantic – a part of speech which categorial meaning is thingness Formal – a) form-building – the category of number, the category of case, the category of gender, the category of article determination b) derivational – typical word-building patterns: suffixation, compounding, convertion (to walk – a walk) 3) Functional – a) combinability: left-hand prepositional combinability with another N/V/Adj./Adv. [+ prep.Noun],casal combinability [N's+N]( .: the speech of the President — the President's speech), contact comb-ty [N+N]- stone-wall constructions, take an intermediary position between compound nouns and noun phrases (stone wall, car roof, speech sound), comb-ty with articles and other determiners [art./det. + N] b) Syntactic functions – subject, object, other functions are less typical Nouns fall into several subclasses which differ as to their semantic and grammatical properties: common — proper, concrete — abstract, countable — uncountable (count — non-count, count — mass), animate — inanimate, personal — non-personal (human — non-human). Lexico- semantic variants of nouns may belong to different subclasses: paper — a paper, etc. The class of nouns can be described as a lexico-grammatical field. Nouns denoting things constitute the centre (nucleus) of the field. Nouns denoting processes, qualities, abstract notions (predicate nouns) are marginal, peripheral elements of the field. Nucleus and periphery are distinguished on the basis of lexico-semantic properties and morph. characteristics – subclasses of Nouns The nucleus -> common- concrete-countable- animate Nouns The periphery -> abstract – material- uncountable Nouns

The category of case

Case is a morphological category which has a distinct syntactic significance, as it denotes relations, of nouns towards other words in the sentence. Languages of synthetic structure have a developed case-system. Languages of analytical structure lack these morphological variants.

This category is expressed in English by the opposition of the form in -'s [-z, -s, -iz], usually called the "possessive" case, or more traditionally, the "genitive" case, to the unfeatured form of the noun, usually called the "common" case. The apostrophised -s serves to distinguish in writing the singular noun in the genitive case from the plural noun in the common case. E.g.: the man's duty, the President's decision, Max's letter; the boy's ball.

Common case

Wide, too general

Genetive case

More precise. It has a wide variety of meanings:

1. Possessive genitive, e.g.:

Mrs. Johnson s passport —* Mrs- Johnson has a passport (R. Quirk etal.).

2. Subjective genitive, indicating the doer of the action, e.g.: the people's choice —» The people chose (S. Greenbaum).

3. Genitive of source, denoting such relationships as authorship and origin. Cf.:

the general's letter —> The general wrote a letter (R. Quirk et al.).

Australia's exports —» the exports that come from Australia (S. Greenbaum).

4. Objective genitive, indicating the object of the action, e.g.: Kennedy's assassination —> Somebody assassinated Kennedy

(S. Greenbaum).

5. Temporal genitive, denoting a period of time, e.g.:

ten days' absence —> The absence lasted ten days (R. Quirk et al.).

6. Equational genitive, establishing the identity of the referent,

e.g.:

a mile's distance ~+ The distance is a mile (L.S. Barkhudarov).

7. Genitive of destination, e.g.:

a women s college —»• a college for women (R. Quirk et al.).

The semantic classification, in the opinion of R. Quirk and his co-authors, is in part arbitrary. For example, one could claim that cow's milk is not a genitive of origin (milk from a cow) but a subjective genitive (The cow provided the milk). No wonder that L.S. Barkhudarov sometimes finds it difficult to name the kernel sentence from which the construction with the genitive case has been derived, e.g.: Nick's school (L.S. Barkhudarov). Of course, Nick's school could be transformed into Nick goes to school, but such transformations can be regarded only as quasi transformations [Z. Harris] because they do not give an opportunity to clearly formulate the rules of generating constructions with the genitive case. + для практики посм в книге типы генетивов: double, absolute

The category of case is disputative

As there exist several CASE THEORIES:

1) Limited case theory (Sweet, Jesperson)

There is such category and there are only 2 cases one of them featured and the other one unfeatured. + Smirnitskij.

2)Positional case theory (Nesfield, Bryant)

The type of the case not on the base of the form of the Noun but on its position => 4 cases:

The nominative case (subject to a verb): Rain falls. The vocative case (address): Are you coming, my friend? The dative case (indirect object to a verb): I gave John a penny. The accusative case (direct object, and also object to a preposition): The man killed a rat. The earth is moistened by rain.

Prepositional case theory (Curme)

Combinations of nouns with prepositions in certain object and attributive collocations should be understood as morphological case forms. To these belong first of all the "dative" case (to+Noun, for+Noun) and the "genitive" case (of+Noun). These prepositions, according to G. Curme, are "inflexional prepositions", i.e. grammatical elements equivalent to case-forms. The would-be prepositional cases are generally taken (by the scholars who recognise them) as coexisting with positional cases, together with the classical inflexional genitive completing the case system of the English noun.

OR Konspekt: Preposition+Noun = a special type of case => as many cases as many combinations

The prepositional theory, though somewhat better grounded than the positional theory, nevertheless can hardly pass a serious linguistic trial. As is well known from noun-declensional languages, all their prepositions, and not only some of them, do require definite cases of nouns (prepositional case-government); this fact, together with a mere semantic observation of the role of prepositions in the phrase, shows that any preposition by virtue of its functional nature stands in essentially the same general grammatical relations to nouns. It should follow from this that not only the of-, to-, and for-phrases, but also all the other prepositional phrases in English must be regarded as "analytical cases".!!! (can be treated as analytical -I gave it to a boy) As a result of such an approach illogical redundancy in terminology would arise: each prepositional phrase would bear then another, additional name of "prepositional case", the total number of the said "cases" running into dozens upon dozens without any gain either to theory or practice

4) Postpositional Case Theory (Vorontsova,Arakin)

Noun has no category of case 's is not typical for this category, it can be added not only to a noun

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