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Words, Nouns, Noun. Adjective., Determiners include
articles (a, an,…
Words, Nouns
Open vs closed classes
- open (lexical or contect): noun, verb, adjective, adverb,
- words that have lexical meaning
nouns denote substances (have physical form) and entities (have no physical form),
verbs - processes and states,
adjectives - properties (багата, бідна) and qualities (багатша, бідніша)
- In order to find out a part of speech of open class words we need to characterize them according to 3 main properties:
- Syntactic properties include
1) function of a word within the phrase (subject, predicate e.g Main verbs possess the syntactic function of predicate in sentences)
2) distribution (combinability, place in a centence) of a word (specifically, the dependent items that they may combine within phrases and sentences).
- Morphological properties include:
1) the types of inflectional properties they exhibit (types of inflection they have)
2) the morphological processes used for forming members of this part of speech from other parts of speech.
- Semantic propertiess include:
1) not the individual meaning of each separate word, but the meaning common to all the words of the given class.
'concrete' nouns denote persons and objects
'abstract' nouns denote states, activities, occasions (e. g. retirement, sadness);
verbs denote actions, states, activities, relationships, etc. ;
adjectives denote properties and qualities;
the meaning of adverbs is the property of an action (that is manner, direction, time, degree, etc).
- To sum up, part of speech is a class of lexemes characterized by its
1) functions in the sentence.
combinability (or distribution)
2) lexicogrammatical morphemes,
lexicogrammatical meaning,
3) grammatical categories or paradigms,
- Semantic criterion is not reliable, so we should take into account morphological and syntactic features in order to classify the word.
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- closed (grammatical or function): conjunction, preposition, pronoun, determiner (few), auxiliary,
- show the relationship between notional words in a sentence or phrase.
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Classificactions
- N. Rayevska - 11 parts of speech
notional (noun, adjective, verb, adverb, pronoun, numeral)
functional ( conjunction, preposition, interjection, modal word, particle)
- E. Morokhovska
- lexical ('lexical words') - possess denotative ability
1) behave like open class words.
2) perform various syntactic functions in the sentence.
3) are names of extralinguistic objects and phenomena. E.g. a door, important, to promote, directly.
- functional ('function words') - possess significative ability
1) do not denote any object, concept, quality or action. mark out certain types of relation between lexical words, phrases and sentences
2) They are conjunctions, prepositions, interjections, modal verbs, particles, articles,
3) Function - to signify categories.
- R. Quirk, S.Greenbaum, G. Leech, J. Svartvik "A University Grammar of English"
1) class words (Group 1) - noun, adjective, adverb, verb
2) formal words (Group 2) - conjunctions, prepositions, interjections, article, demonstratives, other pronouns,
!!! They combined the achievements of traditional and structural approaches and they were clearly influenced by Charles Fries’s division.
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Noun. Adjective.
- Noun - is a part of speech which has the lexical meaning (of thigness or substance)
has inflectional morphemes (the morpheme of plurality and possessive case and derivational morpheme (-ness, - ment, -er, - ist –ship ful, hood, -r.)
has 2 grammatical categories (number and case),
can be combined with verbs, adjectives, numerals, pronouns, nouns;
can be the subject; the object; the adverbial modifier; the predicative, the attribute (syntactic function) .
- This morning the stranger came to get revange
I was too busy to see anyone
She was a monster.
She wore a large straw hat
Can I use your hand cream please? (Adj)
- According to meaning, form, function, combinability nouns are divided into subclasses:
Proper noun - usually is used without determiner or modification, but sometimes, they can be used with determiners, modification or in the plural
Common nouns - proper nouns in examples below have been converted into common nouns (even though the capital letter is retained).
- Proper:
the can appear before certain types of proper noun rivers (the Thames), mountain ranges (the Alps)
the is also capitalised in a few cases: The Hague, The Times.
- Common: (are derived from proper nouns)
There are two Mark Browns in my class.
They say he's the next Maradona.
He remembered an England of green fields and endless summers.
- countable and non-countable
Their meaning is different:
- countable nouns are used when we want to express concretenes (particularization)
uncountable nouns (or mass) are used when we want to express abstractness (generalization)
- singular nouns are used with a count interpretation (a, one, another, each, every, either, neither),(with words that express singularity)
others nouns are used with a mass interpretation (most, much, enough, little).
:warning: some nouns are unexpectedly uncountable. we should use counting expressions to count them.
:warning: sometimes we need to use different lexical items to distinquish btw count and non-count nouns
- Compare:
Most stone is very hard (refers to the geological matter)
He threw another stone into the pond.
Buy an evening paper.
Wrap the parcel in brown paper.
The lambs were eating quietly.
There is lamb on the menu.
My backyard is full of chickens.
Have we got chicken for the second course?
- advice, information,furniture; there is no plural 'furnitures'.
for example, a piece of advice, a loafofbread, two items offurniture.
- a sheep - mutton; a calf- veal; a pig - pork; a loaf- bread; a table - furniture, etc.
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- 'collective' nouns
- can be plural or singular. It depends whether we are reffering to a single group or to a collection of individuals.
( referring to a collection of items or individuals
- they can be plural or singular, depending on whether they are regarded as a single group or as a collection of individuals)
- committee, enemy, family, government, team
Her family has produced many politicians.
Her family have threatened to disown her.
The staffare discontented
The team have decided not to play
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- The category of number
- it's the opposition that shows whether the noun is singural or pl.
- the marked member of the opposition is the plural form marked by:
1) the inflexions -s, -es with three allomorphs /s/, /z/, /iz/,
2) a non-productive inflexion -en (oxen, children),
3) vowel interchange (tooth - teeth, foot - feet),
4) the interchange of suffixes in a number of borrowed words (phenomenon - phenomena, criterion - criteria),
5) a 'zero' allomorph (sheep, fish, swine, deer)
- Uncountable nouns devide into:
- The absolute singular (singularia tantum) is characteristic of the nouns denoting:
1) substance (e. g. milk, sugar, wine, tea, chalk);
2) multitude or collective notions (e. g. mankind, infantry, furniture, foliage);
3) abstract notions (e. g. love, hatred, health, peace, courage, progress);
4) nouns denoting branches of professional activity and some diseases (e. g. phonetics, linguistics, measles, mumps)
- The absolute plural (pluralia tantum) is characteristic of the nouns denoting:
1) objects consisting of two halves (e. g. spectacles, scissors, trousers);
2) objects that have the meaning of concrete and abstract plurality (rendering the idea of indefinite plurality both concrete and abstract) (e. g. clothes, earnings, wages, cattle, contents, goods);
3) nouns denoting materials and their remnants (e. g. preserves, pickles, slops)
- Some linguists put the names of games (cards, dominoes, billiards) to pluralia tantum but usually they’re considered singularia tantum
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- The category of gender - has completely disappeared in English by the end of the Middle English period. ]
The category of female and male exists in Modern English though purely lexical or word-building means are used.
The biologically category of sex determines English gender distinctions.
- Ways of expressing gender in English
:silhouette: an entirely different word is used to differentiate masculine from feminine (boy-girl)
:silhouette: by means of suffixation -ess, -a, -ine, -trix, (actor-actress, saltan-saltana, hero- heroine, admiinistrator -administratrix)
:silhouette: by means of compounding (male elephant, female elephant, he wolf, she wolf)
- Charles Hockett singles out 7 genders in English (on the basis of correlation (connection) between nouns and pronouns)
1) John, boy, man - he;
2) Mary, girl, woman - she;
3) road, street, paper - it;
4) citizen, president, dean, doctor - he, she;
5) Billy-goat, drake ( качур)- he, it;
6) Nanny-goat, boat, car - she, it
7) baby, child, cat, dog - he, she, it
- boy- girl, bachelor- spinster, king - queen, cock - hen, bull - cow, etc.
actor - actress, poet - poetess, signor- signora, saltan - saltana, hero - heroine, heir- heiress, Joseph- Josephine, administrator- administratrix.
bull-calf-cow-calf, he-goat-she-goat, he-wolf- she-wolf, male elephant - female elephant
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- Adjective - a part of speech, which
1) denotes property or quality of a substance
2) is characterized by:
derivative suffixes and prefixes:, -ous (dangerous), -ful (careful), -less (careless), -y(lucky, funny), -ish (selfish), -some (troublesome),-al(central), ial (commercial), en (wooden), -like (childlike), -able (preferable), -ent (different), -ive (talkative), un- (uncountable), in-(il-, ir-, im-) (independent, illegal, irresistable, impatient), etc. ,
inflexional morphemes -er, -est,
3) has the grammatical category of degrees of comparison,
4) is characterized by a specific distribution with nouns and link words (can perform the functions of attribute and predicative)
- A large dog attacked me (attribute)
The dog was large (predicative) a part of a compound nominal predicative.
- Subclasses of adjectives:
- gradable adjectives
1) denote qualities (that can be present in varying degrees).
2) can be used with adverbs (that are sometimes called 'intensifiers') such as very, quite, rather, fairly, pretty, so, too, how, incredibly, completely, enough
- non-gradable adjectives
1) denote such properties (of a substance which are determined by the direct relation of the substance to some other substance)
2) can’t be used with adverbs
- too difficult task, not a very hearty welcome, a very awkward situation, etc.
- a wooden house, a historical event (an event referring to a certain period of history).
- The category of degrees of comparison:
- a gradual opposition which is expressed by
positive degree
comparative degree
superlative degree
- Some adjectives express the comparative and superlative degrees with the help of inflections -er and-est ('inflectionally')
absolute form: tall
comparative: taller
superlative: tallest
- Some adjectives express the comparative and superlative degrees with the help of the degree adverbs –more, - most ('analytically')
absolute form: beautiful
comparative: more beautiful
superlative: most beautiful
- Some adjectives have irregular forms for comparison:
good- better-the best,
bad - worse - the worst
many- more the most,
little - less - the least,
- Some adjectives have irregular alternatives to the regular forms:
far(farther/further,farthest/furthest)
old (older/elder, oldest/eldest).
- The category of state
- Such words as awake, afraid, afloat, asleep, alike, alive, ashamed, aware, which have prefix a-, can belong to a separate part of speech.
But many linguists (prof. L.Barkhudarov, M.Blokh, I. Ivanova) don't agree because
1) These words have the common semantic meaning of state, the same meaning can have other adjective, e. g. angry, hopeful, sad etc.
2) there are words with fused "prefix root", e. g. aware, afraid, aloof.
3) Not all the words that has the common semantic meaning of state possess this prefix: e. g. ill, well, glad, etc.
- Conclusion:the category of state is a subclass of adjectives that have the predicative function
e. g. He is still alive.
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- The category of case (Linguists still argue on the number and even existence of cases in English)
- The traditional point of view
1) the common case – is unmarked (is the form in which the noun is given in the dictionary)
2) the "possessive" case - is marked by 's, which is pronounced as /s/, /z/, /iz/
- Theory of positional cases (the case depends upon the position of the noun in the sentence)
1) Nominative
2) Vocative (in address), identifies a person (animal, object, etc.) I know your sister, John (John is adressed directly)
3) Dative (indirect object to a verb), We gave a bone to our dog. (дали кому?)
4) Accusative (direct object and also object with preposition) The dog ate our turkey. The leopard chased him for an hour.
- “with + noun” = instrumental etc.
- Theory of prepositional cases ( the case may be expressed by prepositions (by the phrase "preposition + noun")
1) "of + noun" phrase (corresponds to the Ukrainian noun in genitive case), (a cup of tee)
2) "to + noun" phrase (corresponds to the noun in dative case) etc. (He gaves orders to the slaves)
- The possessive postpositional theory ( The English noun has completely lost the category of case in the course of its historical development)
It is proved by the following arguments:
1) 's is used not only with single nouns, but with the whole noun groups, groups without nouns, e. g. Smith and Brown's office; e. g. somebodyelse's car;
2) only animate nouns are used in the possessive case.Inanimate nouns in the possessive case occur quite rarely, e. g. the house's roof, though there is a tendency to use inanimate nouns in possessive case.
- fixed collocations and stable phrases
At the death’s door, life’s work, for god’s sake, for old times’ sake – behave like phraseological units
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- Determiners include
articles (a, an, the),
cardinal numbers (one, two, three...)
ordinal numbers (first, second, third...),
demonstratives (this, that, these, those),
partitives (some of, piece of, and others),
quantifiers (most, all, and others),
difference words (other, another),
possessive determiners (my, your, his, her, its, our, their).
- Modifiers
1) two nouns together to show that one thing is a part of something else (the village churce, the car door)
2) to show what something is made of (a gold watch, a leather purse)
3) with nouns ending in –er (an office worker, a jewellery maker)
4) measurements, age or value as modifier (a thirty-kilogram suitcase, a two-minute rest)
5) nouns ending in -ing as noun modifiers (a shopping list, a swimming lesson)
6) put two nouns together (an ice bucket)
7) more than two nouns together: (London office workers, grammar practice exercises)
8) Noun modifiers come after adjectives: ( the old newspaper seller , a tiring fifty-kilometre journey)