THE NOUN. 1.General characteristics.
The noun is the central lexical unit of language. It is the main nominative unit of speech.
As any other part of speech, the noun can be characterised by three
criteria:
semantic (the meaning),
morphological (the form and grammatical categories)
and
syntactical (functions, distribution).
3. According to their quantitative structure nouns can be
countable and
uncountable. This set of subclasses cannot be put together into one table because of the different
principles of classification.
Morphological features of the noun. In accordance with the morphological structure of
the stems all nouns can be classified into: simple,derived (stem + affix, affix + stem –
thingness ); compound (stem+ stem –
armchair ) and composite (the Hague). The noun
has morphological categories of number and case.
Syntactic features of the noun. The noun can be used in the sentence in
all syntacticfunctions but predicate.
The category of number The category of number expresses the opposition of the plural form of the noun to the
singular form of the noun. The number category is realized through the opposition of two
form-classes: the
plural form :: the
singular form . The grammatical category of number is
the linguistic representation of the objective category of quantity. The category of number in
English is restricted in its realization because of the dependent implicit grammatical meaning
of
countableness/uncountableness . The number category is realized only within subclass of
countable nouns.
1. The nouns in which the opposition of explicit
discreteness/indiscreteness is expressed
:
cat::cats ;
2. The nouns in which this opposition is not expressed explicitly but is revealed by
syntactical and lexical correlation in the context. There are two groups here:
A. Singularia tantum. It covers different groups of nouns: proper names, abstract nouns,
material nouns, collective nouns;
B. Pluralia tantum. It covers the names of objects consisting of several parts (jeans), names
of sciences (mathematics), names of diseases, games, etc.
