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THEME 3
NOUNS
1. Categorial meaning of English nouns
2. Lexical/grammatical subclasses of English nouns
3. Morphemic structure of English nouns
4. Categories of English nouns
4.1. Number (a morphological category)
4.2. Case (a morphological category)
4.3. Gender (a semantic category)
5. Syntactic functions of English nouns
6. The categorial status of English articles

1. CATEGORIAL MEANING OF ENGLISH NOUNS

The categorial meaning of nouns is that of substance. The noun is the
central nominative unit of the language.

2. LEXICAL/GRAMMATICAL SUBCLASSES OF ENGLISH NOUNS

The main lexical/grammatical subclasses of nouns are common nouns and
proper names.
A common noun may be the name of any object or phenomenon. Common
nouns are represented by different lexical groups which interact with the
grammatical categories of nouns and form a rather elaborate field structure of the
part-of-speech category of the noun.
Proper names have no conceptual meaning: they are names of individual
objects which possess only the referential meaning. Proper names are the object
matter of onomastics. Place names are studied by toponymics.

3. THE MORPHEMIC STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH NOUNS

Root nouns are quite common in English, e.g. man, root, salt.
Stem-building morphemes may denote:
- people: -er, -ist, -ess, -ee, etc.;
- abstract notions: -ness, -ion, -ity, -ism, -ance, -ment, etc.
Substantivation of adjectives (noun-conversed adjectives) is exemplified by
a relative, a white, a dear. By analogy with the verbids (non-finite forms of the
verb), these words can be called adjectivids since they should rather be considered
as nominal forms of adjectives than nouns as such.

4. CATEGORIES OF ENGLISH NOUNS

4.1. Number
The meaning of the grammatical category of number is the juxtaposition of
onenness to more than onenness (plurality). The grammatical opposition is written
in following way: SINGULAR::PLURAL. The singular form is the base one; it is
non-marked. The plural form is marked for plurality. It may be built according to:
(1) the open model (the formant –s);
(2) one of the closed models, namely:
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- suffixation;
- vowel interchange;
- non-marked plural forms.
The category of number is neutralized, or suspended (reduced to one
member) with the following nouns:
- pluralia tantum;
- singualria tantum;
- those ending in -s in the singular form;
- those not ending in -s in the plural form.
The meaning of countability/non-countability is a dependent grammatical
meaning. The borderline between countables and uncountables may run between
the lexical/semantic variants of a word.

4.2. Case
There is no agreement upon the number of cases in the present-day English.
Most of linguists believe that there are two of them – the Common Case and
the Possessive Case (the Genitive). Others claim there are four: to the two
mentioned above they add the Dative (expressed with the preposition to and the
word order) and the Accusative (with word order alone). Yet B. A. Ilysh rightfully
claims that once we admit that the category of case can be expressed with non-
morphological means, we can find an even greater number of cases. There is also a
view according to which there is no case in English at all. The main argument of
its proponents is that 's is attachable not only to nouns, but to phrases as well (e.g.
somebody else’s child). Yet this argument cannot be taken as valid: though ’s is
formally detached it is semantically bound to the corresponding noun.
Though the category of case in the present-day English language can be said
to be a morphological one, it is syntactically relevant. This is reflected in the
syntactic functions of nouns in the two cases: nouns in the common case are
subjects or objects in a sentence; nouns in the possessive case are attributes.
The 's genitive and the of-phrase are not in complementary distribution (Cf.
Dr Brown’s son is the son of Dr. Brown). Sometimes they differ semantically (Cf.
the girl’s story – the story of a girl). The 's genitive is restricted in its usage while
the of-phrase can be used with all kinds of nouns.

4.3. Gender
The morphological category of gender in English had disappeared by the
end of the Middle English period, and today the category of gender with the
English nouns can be said to be semantic. Some indications of the biological sex in
the present-day English nouns are confined to purely lexical means and word-
building means.
B. Strang (“Modern English Structure”) postulates the existence of the
category of gender with the nouns of the present-day English on the grounds that it
is possible to substitute a noun with a pronoun indicating the biological sex or non-
animatedness of the denotatum (e.g. he, she, it). This view is unacceptable because
it extrapolates the meaning of another part of speech to the sphere of the noun.
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5. SYNTACTIC FUNCTIONS OF ENGLISH NOUNS

In comparison with other parts of speech, the noun possesses the most varied
set of syntactic functions. The most common among them are those of the subject
and the object. Nouns can also perform a predicative function, being part of a
composite nominal predicate. The attributive function of the noun makes a specific
feature of English: e.g. a stone wall, a rose garden.
There are several approaches to the problem of what the status of the first
element in the combination N1+N2 is.
1. A. I. Smirnitsky and O.S. Akhmanova consider the combination N 1+N2 to be an
occasional composite word. Hence N1 is given the status of a morpheme. Yet
the word is a stable unit, and thus the theory of its spontaneous creation and
decomposition is hardly acceptable.
2. The authors of The Concise Oxford Dictionary consider N 1 to be an adjective
formed by conversion from the corresponding noun. Yet it does not acquire any
features of adjectives, such as gradation of quality (Cf.*a very stone wall), or
combinability with adverbs (Cf. *a beautifully rose garden).
3. Hence N1 is an attributive noun. As such, it can be modified with adjectives,
e.g. a nuclear weapons test and numerals a First World War graveyard.

6. THE CATEGORIAL STATUS OF ENGLISH ARTICLES

The status of the article in the system of the present-day English is a highly
debatable issue with many scholars. Comparison with other languages here is of no
good. For example, in German it is declinable; thus it is a word. In Bulgarian it is
attached to a word; thus it is a morpheme.
It is obvious that articles should be considered in connection with the
category of noun (morphological) and the category of the Functional Sentence
Perspective (syntactic). Though morphologically relevant, the article serves to
express non-morphological meanings. According to S. D. Katznel’son, it is a
marker of the discursive category of definiteness/indefiniteness. The main
semantic function of the article is actualization of the theme/rheme distinction.
The status of the article in English is that of a grammatical word-morpheme.

FURTHER READING
1. Blokh M.Y. A Course in Theoretical English Grammar. – M., 2000. – P. 48–83.
2. Khaimovich B.S., Rogovskaya B.I. A Course in English Grammar. – M., 1967. – P. 51– 75.
3. Kobrina N.A. et al. An English Grammar: Morphology. – M., 1985. – P. 180–195.
4. Rayevska N.M. Modern English Grammar. – K., 1976. – P. 72– 88.
5. Иванова И.П., Бурлакова В.В., Почепцов Г.Г. Теоретическая грамматика английского
языка. – М., 1981. – С. 4–20.
6. Морозова Е.И., Паповянц Э.Г. Методические указания и задания для самостоятельной
работы по курсу теоретической грамматики: Морфология. – Харьков, 1989. – С. 9–13.