THEME 6
:
NOUNS. SEMANTIC GROUPS AND GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES. THE
CATEGORY OF DETERMINATION.THE PROBLEMS OF THE ARTICLE.
Problems to be discussed:
1.
Nouns as a part of speech
2. Subclasses of English Nouns
.
3. The grammatical categories of nouns: a)number
b)case
4. The meaning of gender
in Modern English
- gender and sex.
5. Grammatical determination of the noun
In most cases in treating parts of speech in English we shall
keep to the conception
of scientists that we refer to post-structural tendency. It's because they combine the ideas of
traditional and structural grammarians. The noun is classified into a separate word -group because:
1. they all have the same lexical-grammatical meaning : substance/thing
2. according to their form-they've two grammatical categories:
number and case
3. they all have typical stem-building elements: -er, -ist, -ship, -merit, -hood ...
4. typical combinability with other words: Most often left-hand combinability
5. function –the most characteristic feature of nouns is-they can be
observed in all syntactic
functions but predicate.
Some words about the distribution of nouns. Because of the fact that nouns express
or denote substance / thing, their distribution is bound with
the words which express
the quality of substance, their number, their actions and their relation to the other words /nouns/
in English. When the quality of nouns are described we make use of adjectives: big, red apple
energetic crisis, along, dusty track and others.
When the quantity and order of nouns are described the numerals are to be used: the six
continents, 25
th anniversary, 12students....
When we denote the action of substances we make use of the verbs:
An apple-tree grows
in the garden.
