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NOUNS

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

A noun tells us what someone or something is called.



a noun can be:

the name of a person (John)

a job title ( a doctor)

the name of a thing ( radio)

the name of a place ( London)

the name of a quality (courage)

the name of an action (laughter/laughing).


Nouns are the names we give to people, things,

places etc. in order to identify them

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

Nouns are designators used to refer to

objects (referents) of extralinguistic

reality.

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

morphological point of view:



nouns are characterized by

grammatical categories (sometimes

called secondary grammatical

categories) which are actually certain

generalizations which are made about

the properties that nouns exhibit.

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

English nouns exhibit categories of

countability

number
determination
gender
case

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NOUNS

COMMON

COUNT

UNCOUNT/

MASS

ABSTRACT

CONCRETE

ABSTRACT

PROPER

CONCRETE

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NOUN CATEGORIES:

GENDER

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

the most controversial of all noun

categories



Introduction of some changes in the

existing system of gender categories

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

Slovak nouns



as masculine, feminine or neuter.

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

In English, nouns are not divided into

gender groups equivalent to Slovak

ones.



Gender plays only a minor role in the

system of English grammar – the few

gender distinctions that are made are

manifested in the use of pronouns

and in reference to nouns.

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Nouns

Animate

Inanimate

personal

Non-

personal

- Inanimate – box

which -it

-

Masculine

uncle

who - he

-

Feminine

aunt

who - she

-

Dual

doctor

who – he/she

-

Common

baby

who – he/she/it (which)

-

Collective

family

which-it (who/they)

-

Masculine

higher animal

bull

which – it (who – he)

-

Feminine

cow

which – it (who – she)

higer animal

-

Common

higer animal

horse

which – it (who – he/she)

-

Higer organism ship

which - it

-

Lower animal

ant

which - it

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1.Personal masculine/feminine nouns form

pairs:



a/Without marked morphological differentiation (i.e.

different lexical units): man/woman,husband/wife,

sir/madam



b/ with marked morphological differentiation (i.e.

derivational relationship, masculine is unmarked,

suffixes – ess, ine, ette)



derivational suffixes – emperor/emperess,

hero/heroine



compound nouns – man teacher/woman teacher

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

In some exceptions, feminine nouns may be

unmarked – widow/widower



Some nouns do not have a counterpart of the

opposite gender (dandy)



Many animal names follow the above

classification:



Stallion /mare, he-goat/she-goat

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2. dual (superordinate) term

(parent for father/mother)


increasing use of dual nouns (author) with which the

gender is indicated only from the pronominal

reference.

The author says she is working on another novel.


The reasons for this are claimed to be the elimination

of the existing asymmetries in language (e.g.

unmarked noun = masculine, marked = feminine)in an

effort to fight stereotypes and bias, such as sexism, or

the fact that some derived nouns may have acquired

unfavorable connotations over time.

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

Sometimes explicit gender reference

with dual nouns is needed (nurse –

male nurse)

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3.Common and collective nouns have

both personal and non-personal

reference, though not in all contexts.

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

In the former case, familiarity or

emotional involveness – positive

emotional attitude - is decisive (child =

she or he not it).

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

In the latter, the opposition of

individuality (personal reference,

plural concord) or collectivity (non-

personal reference = singular concord)

is at play.

The jury have (= they)/ has

(=it)returned the verdict of guilty.

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4. Higher animal (i.e. domestic, farming

animals, pets ) nouns follow :



morphologically unmarked (buck/doe)



marked masculine/feminine distinction.

(tiger/tigress )


In case the gender distinction is irrelevant,

one term is used for both sexes (lion for

lion/lioness).

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5.Common higher animal nouns

include those of which no distinction is

made

We went to see the Peterson´s horse

which they bought only recently.

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6. Higher organisms are represented by
a/ names of countries (geographical units –

inanimate, political/social/economic units –

personal feminine, in sports – personal

collective, in all cases non-personal relative

pronoun used)

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

7. Lower (less familiar) animals as well as
inanimate nouns

have identical non-personal

reference.



Occasionaly, a gender distinction may be

made by means of compounding.

(he-goat/she –goat)

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

A closely related problem to the

category of gender is the claim that

English is a sexist language because it

reinforces existing societal gender

stereotypes and is used as a tool of

verbal abuse, which may easily lead

to physical abuse.

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

Among the very often quoted examples belong:

- Professor is male, nurse female

- The word man widely used in compound nouns

(postman) exclude females

- there is no gender-neutral (non-sexist) 3rd person

pronoun , though many suggestions have been made

to fill the gap, for example, the proposed words

include : co, et, han, heris, herm, hesh, jhe, na person,

she/he, (s)he, she or he, sher, shim etc.

- female nouns ending in suffixes –ess, -ette are

formed from unmarked male nouns,

- many female nouns have acquired demeaning

undertones (lady)

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

The proponents of non-sexist usage suggest the following

solutions:



replace the word man when it is not meant to include males

only with human – humankind,



use male/female only when referring to sex distinctions



in compounds, use woman only to clarify the meaning



when reffering to man as a species, use ancestors, forebears,

human society



eliminate the use of discriminatory derivational suffixes – ess



use one instead of exclusive he



Anyone can present their ideas in public.

instead of



Anyone can present his/her ideas in public.

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CASE

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

the position of the category in English

is quite specific, as syntactical relations

are realized analytically by word

order and prepositions rather than by

noun inflections which have been lost

in the course of the historical

development of English.

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

As a result, the inventory of ModE

inflectional case endings is limited to

the ´s genitive the sole survivor from

the OE synthetic declensional system

of nouns.

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

Also called possesive case (or Saxon

genitive), ´s genitive forms a two-

member category with common case,

in which the latter is the unmarked

member.

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

As the functions of the ´s genitive are

by no means exhausted by that of

denoting possession, sometimes the

term adnominal case is preferred.

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

Besides adnominal inflectional case,

of-genitive (a postmodifying of

phrase) is also used to signal case

distinction in English.

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

As to the form of the ´s genitive, it is

homophonic with the regular plural

ending –s and pronounced s, z , iz

depending on the preceding sound

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

In writing, on singular nouns it is marked by

the apostrophe and the suffix (a girl’s

dream),

on regular plural nouns only by the

apostrophe (zero genitive , students´

essays)

on irregular plurals, it is marked

exactly as on regular singular nouns

(children’s toys)

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

Some nouns ending in s, sometimes

admit only the apostrophe while

retaining ziz or iz pronunciation.



Charles´ visits abroad, Keats´ books

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

Mary and Jane´s friends



Mary´s and Jane´s friends

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

Mary and Jane´s friends (the friends

they share)



Mary´s and Jane´s friends (Mary´s

friends and Jane´s friends, not

shared)

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

´s genitive has several features in common with

adjective-forming suffixes and thus it is possible

to view it as on of them, not as a case ending of the

noun.



It always precedes the modified head noun, and it

can be attached to the whole phrase - group

genitive if the semantic feature applies to both NPs

together.



If the feature applies to the NPs individually, the -´s

morpheme is used with each

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

Double genitive:



combines adnominal and of-genitive



typical construction – a book of Peter´s = one of

Peter´s books.



Other possible determiners are demonstratives, and

wh- determiners, but not the.



That crazy idea of Peter’s drives me mad. – criticism



Peter’s crazy idea. – used in preference



+The crazy idea of Peter’s.+

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

In some cases, ´s genitives and

postmodifying of-phrases are used

indiscriminately



The ship´s name, the name of the ship



With ´s genitive being more compact

and economical.

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

In most cases though, the two

genitives have a separate range of

uses:

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a/The ´s genitive case (adnominal case) is

used only with a subclass of nouns

(mainly those denoting humans) and

with the other nouns the same meaning is

expressed by and of – genitive.

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

b/ register (all registers prefer – of

genitives, ´s genitives are most

frequent in news writing)

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

c/ type of dependent noun



´s genitives are used primarily with animate

nouns – personal names and proper nouns,

higher animal nouns (lion´s den), collective

nouns (the jury´s decision)



Some special types of inanimate nouns, esp.

those admitting personification (geographical

names – Europe´s turbulent times), locative

nouns (university´s staff), temporal nouns (this

year´s unemployment rate) or set expressions (

a dollar´s worth trinkets)

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

Of genitives are used primarily with inanimate

concrete nouns (the door of the bus)



Abstract impersonal nouns ( a feeling of

sadness)

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

d/semantic relation between the head

and the dependent phrase:



´s genitive is commonly used as possessive

genitive (my family´s savings),subjective

genitive (my mother-in-law´s arrival),

objective genitive (the dean´s election),

genitive of origin (senator´s fault),

descriptive genitive (a winter´s tale), a

genitive of measure (a few minute´s walk)