The Category of Number of English Nouns

     Факультет: Иностранных языков

     Специальность: Перевод и переводоведение 
 
 
 

     Курсовая  работа 

     Дисциплина: Теоретическая грамматика

     Тема: The Category of Number of English Nouns 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

     Липецк 2009

     Contents 

Introduction

1. What is Noun?

2. Semantical Characteristics of English Nouns

3. The Category of Number of English Nouns

Conclusion

Bibliography 
 

 

      Introduction 

     The theme of my course paper sounds as following: «The number category of  English noun ». Before beginning of investigation in our theme, I would like to say some words dealt with the theme of my course paper.

     The noun is a word expressing substance in the widest sense of the word. In the concept of substance we include not only names of living beings (e.g. boy, girl, bird) and lifeless things (e.g. table, chair, book), but also names of abstract notions, i.e. qualities, slates, actions (kindness, strength, sleep, fear, conversation, fight), abstracted from their bearers. In speech these types of nouns are treated in different ways, so one, who does not know ways of treatment, can make mistakes in his speech.

     Standing on such ground, I would like to point out tasks and aims of my work

     1. The first task of my work is to give definition to term «Noun».

     2. Second task is to describe main features of English nouns.

     3. And the last task is to describe grammatical categories that nouns possesses.

     The present course paper consists of four parts: introduction, the main part, conclusion and bibliography. Within the introduction part, which includes two items we gave the brief description of our qualification work (the first item) and gave general notion of the word «noun». The main part of our qualification work includes several items. There we discussed such problems as definition of nouns, main features of English nouns, their grammatical categories. In the conclusion to our qualification work we tried to draw some results from the scientific investigations made within the main part of our qualification work. In bibliography part we mentioned more than 20 sources of which were used while compiling the present work. It includes linguistic books and articles dealing with the theme, a number of used dictionaries and encyclopedias and also some internet sources. 

1. What is Noun? 

     The word «noun» comes from the Latin nomen meaning «name». Word classes like nouns were first described by Sanskrit grammarian Panini and ancient Greeks like Dionysius Thorax, and defined in terms of their morphological properties. For example, in Ancient Greece, nouns can be inflected for grammatical case, such as dative or accusative. Verbs, on the other hand, can be inflected for tenses, such as past, present or future, while nouns cannot. Aristotle also had a notion of onomata (nouns) and rhemata (verbs) which, however, does not exactly correspond our notions of verbs and nouns. In her dissertation, Vinokurova has a more detailed discussion of the historical origin of the notion of a noun.

     Expressions of natural language will have properties at different levels. They have formal properties, like what kinds of morphological prefixes or suffixes they can take, and what kinds of other expressions they can combine with. but they also have semantic properties, i.e. properties pertaining to their meaning. The definition of nouns on the top of this page is thus a formal definition. That definition is uncontroversial, and has the advantage that it allows us to effectively distinguish nouns from non-nouns. However, it has the disadvandage that it does not apply to nouns in all languages. For example in Russian, there are no definite articles, so one cannot define nouns by means of those. There are also several attempts of defining nouns in terms of their semantic properties. Many of these are controversial, but some are discussed below.

     In traditional school grammars, one often encounters the definition of nouns that they are all and only those expressions that refer to a person, place, thing, event, substance, quality, or idea, etc. This is a semantic definition. It has been criticized by contemporary linguists as being quite uninformative. Part of the problem is that the definition makes use of relatively general nouns («thing», «phenomenon»,  «event») to define what nouns are. The existence of such general nouns shows us that nouns are organized in taxonomic hierarchies. But other kinds of expressions are also organized in hierarchies. For example all of the verbs «stroll», «saunter,» «stride,» and «tread» are more specific words than the more general «walk.» The latter is more specific than the verb «move»/ But it is unlikely that such hierarchies can be used to define nouns and verbs. Furthermore, an influential theory has it that verbs like «kill» or «die» refer to events, and so they fall under the definition. Similarly, adjectives like «yellow» or «difficult» might be thought to refer to qualities, and adverbs like «outside» or «upstairs» seem to refer to places. Worse still, a trip into the woods can be referred to by the verbs «stroll» or «walk»/ But verbs, adjectives and adverbs are not nouns, and nouns aren't verbs. So the definition is not particularly helpful in distinguishing nouns from other parts of speech.

     Another semantic definition of nouns is that they are prototypically referential. That definition is also not very helpful in distinguishing actual nouns from verbs. But it may still correctly identify a core property of noun hood. For example, we will tend to use nouns like «fool» and «car» when we wish to refer to fools and cars, respectively. The notion that this is prototypical reflects the fact that such nouns can be used, even though nothing with the corresponding property is referred to:

     John is no fool.

     If I had a car, I'd go to Marrakech.

     The first sentence above doesn't refer to any fools, nor does the second one refer to any particular car.

     In most cases in treating English nouns 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, – ment, – 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.

     From the grammatical point of view most important is the division of nouns into countable and un-countable with regard to the category of number and into declinable and indeclinable with regard to the category of case¹. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

     2. Semantical Characteristics of English Nouns 

     Nouns fall under two classes: (A) proper nouns; (B) common nouns².

     a) Proper nouns are individual, names given to separate persons or things. As regards their meaning proper nouns may be personal names (Mary, Peter, Shakespeare), geographical names (Moscow, London, the Caucasus), the names of the months and of the days of the week (February, Monday), names of ships, hotels, clubs, etc.

     A large number of nouns now proper were originally common nouns (Brown, Smith, Mason).

     Proper nouns may change their meaning and become common nouns:

     «George went over to the table and took a sandwich and a glass of champagne. (Aldington)

     b) Common nouns are names that can be applied to any individual of ad ass of persons or things (e.g. man, dog, book), collections of similar individuals or things regarded as a single unit (e. g. peasantry, family), materials (e. g. snow, iron, cotton) or abstract notions (e.g. kindness, development).

     Thus there are different groups of common nouns: class nouns, collective nouns, nouns of material and abstract nouns.

     1. Class nouns denote persons or things belonging to a class. They are countable and have two. numbers: singular and plural. They are generally used with an article.

     «Well, sir», said Mrs. Parker, «I wasn't in the shop above a great deal.» (Mansfield)

     He goes to the part of the town where the shops are. (Lessing)

     2. Collective nouns denote a number or collection of similar individuals or things as a single unit.

     Collective nouns fall under the following groups:

     (a) nouns used only in the singular and denoting-a number of things collected together and regarded as a single object: foliage, machinery.

     It was not restful, that green foliage. (London)

     Machinery new to the industry in Australia was introduced for preparing land. (Agricultural Gazette)

     (b) nouns which are singular in form though plural in meaning:

     police, poultry, cattle, people, gentry They are usually called nouns of multitude. When the subject of the sentence is a noun of multitude the verb used as predicate is in the plural:

     I had no idea the police were so devilishly prudent. (Shaw)

     Unless cattle are in good condition in calving, milk production will never reach a high level. (Agricultural Gazette)

     The weather was warm and the people were sitting at their doors. (Dickens)

     (c) nouns that may be both singular and plural: family, crowd, fleet, nation. We can think of a number of crowds, fleets or different nations as well as of a single crowd, fleet, etc.

     A small crowd is lined up to see the guests arrive. (Shaw)

     Accordingly they were soon afoot, and walking in the direction of the scene of action, towards which crowds of people were already pouring from a variety of quarters. (Dickens)

     3. Nouns of material denote material: iron, gold, paper, tea, water. They are uncountable and are generally used without any article.

     There was a scent of honey from the lime-trees in flower. (Galsworthy)

     There was coffee still in the urn. (Wells)

     Nouns of material are used in the plural to denote different sorts of a given material.

     … that his senior counted upon him in this enterprise, and had consigned a quantity of select wines to him… (Thackeray)

     Nouns of material may turn into class nouns (thus becoming countable) when they come to express an individual object of definite shape.

     Compare:

     – To the left were clean panes of glass. (Ch. Bronte)

     «He came in here,» said the waiter looking at the light through the tumbler, «ordered a glass of this ale.» (Dickens)

     But the person in the glass made a face at her, and Miss Moss went out. (Mansfield).

     4. Abstract nouns denote some quality, state, action or idea: kindness, sadness, fight. They are usually uncountable, though some of them may be countable.

     Therefore when the youngsters saw that mother looked neither frightened nor offended, they gathered new courage. (Dodge)

     Accustomed to John Reed's abuse – I never had an idea of plying it. (Ch. Bronte)

     It's these people with fixed ideas. (Galsworthy)

     Abstract nouns may change their meaning and become class nouns. This change is marked by the use of the article and of the plural number:

     beauty a beauty  beauties

     sight  a sight sights

     He was responsive to beauty and here was cause to respond. (London)

     She was a beauty. (Dickens)

     … but she isn't one of those horrid regular beauties. (Aldington) 

     3. The Category of Number of English Nouns 

     The category of number of English nouns is the system of opposites (such as girl – girls, foot – feet, etc.) showing whether the noun stands for one object or more than one, in other words, whether its grammatical meaning is 'oneness' or 'more-than-oneness' of objects.

     The connection of the category with the world of material reality, though indirect, is quite transparent. Its meanings reflect the existence of individual objects and groups of objects in the material world.

     All number opposites are identical in content: they contain two particular meanings of 'singular' and 'plural' united by the general meaning of the category, that of 'number'. But there is a considerable variety of form in number opposites, though it is not so great as in the Russian language.

     An English noun lexeme can contain two number opposites at most (toy –  boys, boy's – boys'). Many lexemes have but one oppose me (table – tables) and many others have no opposites at all (ink, news).

     In the opposite boy – boys 'singularity' is expressed by a zero morpheme and 'plurality' is marked by the positive morpheme /-z/, in spelling – .s. In other words, the 'singular' member of the opposite is not marked, and the 'plural' member is marked.

     In the opposite boy's – boys' both members have positive morphemes –‘s, – s’, but these morphemes can be distinguished only in writing. In the spoken language their forms do not differ, so with regard to each other they are unmarked. They can be distinguished only by their combinability (cf. a boy's head, boys' heads).

     In a few noun lexemes of foreign origin both members of a number opposite are marked, e.g. symposium – symposia, genus – genera, phenomenon–phenomena, etc. But in the process of assimilation this peculiarity of foreign nouns gets gradually lost, and instead of medium – media a new opposite develops, medium – mediums; instead of formula – formulae, the usual form now is formula – formulas. In this process, as we see, the foreign grammatical morphemes are neglected as such. The ‘plural’ morpheme is dropped altogether. The 'singular' morpheme becomes part of the stem. Finally, the regular – s ending is added to form the 'plural' opposite. As a result the 'singular' becomes unmarked, as typical of English, and the 'plural' gets its usual mark, the suffix – s.

     Since the 'singular' member of a number opposite is not marked, the form of the opposite is, as a rule, determined by the form of the 'plural' morpheme, which, in its turn, depends upon the stem of the lexeme.

     In the overwhelming majority of cases the form of the 'plural' morpheme is /-s/, /-z/, or /-z/, in spelling – (e) s, e. g, books, boys, matches.

     With the stem ox – the form of the 'plural' morpheme is – en /-n/.

     In the opposite man–men the form of the 'plural' morpheme is the vowel change /æ > e/. In woman – women ii is /u > i/, in foot – feet it is /u – i:/, etc.

     In child – children the form of the 'plural' morpheme is complicated. It consists of the vowel change /ai > i/ and the suffix – ren.

     In sheep – sheep the 'plural' is not marked, thus coinciding in form with the 'singular'. They can be distinguished only by their combinability: ‘one sheep’, ‘five sheep’, ‘a sheep was…’, ‘sheep were…’, ‘this sheep’, ‘these sheep’. The 'plural' coincides in form with the 'singular' also in ‘deer, fish, carp, perch, trout, cod, salmon’, etc.³

     All the 'plural' forms enumerated here are forms of the same morpheme. This can be proved, as we know, by the identity of the 'plural' meaning, and the complementary distribution of these forms, i.e. the fact that different forms are used with different stems.

     As already mentioned ⁴, with regard to the category of number English nouns fall into two subclasses: countable and uncountable. The former have number opposites, the latter have not. Uncountable nouns are again subdivided into those having no plural opposites and those having no singular opposites.

     Nouns like milk, geometry, self-possession having no plural opposites are usually called by a Latin name – singularia tantum. Nouns like outskirts, clothes, goods having no singular opposites are known as pluralia tantum.