The category of case of nouns

THE CATEGORY OF CASE OF NOUNS
CONTENT
INTRODUCTION ……………………………………………………...3
CHAPTER I NOUN…………………………………………………..…5
1.1. The definition of the category of Case………………………………5
1.2. The problem of category of Case in Modern English………………10
CHAPTER II Different approaches to its interpretation……………….15
2.1. The traditional approach…………………………………………...15
2.2. The theory of “positional” cases………………………………...…23
2.3. The difference between the morpheme ’s and other grammatical morphemes of the English language……………………………………25
CONCLUSION ………………………………………………………..35
REFERENCES…………………………………………………….......36


Introduction
Of all the parts of speech, nouns are perhaps the most important. A noun is a word that identifies a person, animal, place, thing, or idea. Here, we’ll take a closer look at what makes a noun a noun, and we’ll provide some noun examples, along with some advice for using nouns in your sentences.
Identifying a Noun
A noun is a part of speech that denotes a person, animal, place, thing, or idea. The English word noun has its roots in the Latin word nomen, which means “name.” Every language has words that are nouns. As you read the following explanations, think about some words that might fit into each category.

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  Person – A term for a person, whether proper name, gender, title, or class, is a noun.
  
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  Animal – A term for an animal, whether proper name, species, gender, or class is a noun.
  
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  Place – A term for a place, whether proper name, physical location, or general locale is a noun.
  
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  Thing – A term for a thing, whether it exists now, will exist, or existed in the past is a noun.
  
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  Idea – A term for an idea, be it a real, workable idea or a fantasy that might never come to fruition is a noun.
  

The only noun case that changes form is the possessive case . Keep in mind that pronouns do change form when they change case. Choosing cases base on the position of the noun in the sentence comes into play in sentence situations like linking verbs, "I" v. "me", appositive phrases and cases in captions.
A noun is said to be a word that identifies a person or animal (girl, postman, human, grandma, horse), a thing (flower, pot, ceiling, jam, hat, grass) or an idea or state (freedom, anxiety, democracy, blindness, joy). A better way to identify a noun from other parts of speech is by its morphological features (suffixes and prefixes) and their position and function in a sentence.

There are specific features that help you distinguish a noun from other parts of speech. Nouns are often preceded by a determiner like "the," "a" or "an." There are common nouns and proper nouns. Proper nouns are names and begin with a capital letter. Nouns can be singular or plural (apple vs. apples) and can show possession (Jenny’s apple).

A good way distinguish a noun from other parts of speech is to look at its function in a sentence. Some of the common roles of a noun are a subject, direct object, indirect object and an object of a preposition, for example:
Jenny likes jam – “Jenny” is the subject and “jam” is the direct object.
Jenny gave Margaret some jam – “Margaret” is the indirect object.
Jenny enjoys eating jam with friends – “friends” is the object of a preposition.