General characteristics of the noun

The noun as a part of speech has the categorial mean­ing of "substance" or "thingness". Thus, the noun is the main nominative part of speech.

The noun has the power, by way of nomination, to iso­late different properties of substances (i.e. direct and oblique qualities, and also actions and states as processual character­istics of substantive phenomena) and present them as corres­ponding self-dependent substances. This practically unlimited substantivization force establishes the noun as the central nominative lexical unit of the language.

The categorial functional properties of the noun are determined by its semantic properties. The most characteristic substantive function of the noun is that of the subject in the sentence, since the referent of the subject is the person or thing. The function of the object in the sentence is also typical of the noun as the substance word. Other syntactic functions, i.e. attributive, adverbial, and even predicative, although per­formed by the noun quite frequently, are not immediately characteristic of its substantive quality as such.

The noun is characterized by some special types of combinability. In particular, typical of the noun is the prepositional combinability with another noun, a verb, an adjective, an adverb.

E.g.: an entrance to the house; to turn round the corner; red in the face; far from its destination.

The possessive combinability characterizes the noun alongside of its prepositional combinability with an­other noun.

E.g.: the speech of the President — the President's speech;

the cover of the book — the book's cover.

English nouns can also easily combine with one another by sheer contact, without the use of any special means. In the contact group the noun in pre­-position plays the role of a semantic qualifier to the noun in post-position.

E.g.: a cannon ball; a log cabin; a sports event; film festivals.

The lexico-grammatical status of such combinations has presented a big problem for many scholars, who were uncertain as to the linguistic heading under which to treat them either as one separate word, or a word-group. In the history of linguistics the controversy about the lexico-grammatical status of the constructions in question has received the name "The cannon ball problem".

Taking into account the results of the comprehensive analysis undertaken in this field the combination may be defined as a specific word-group with inter­mediary features.

Cf: a cannon ball - a ball for cannon;

the court regulation— the regulation of the court

The corresponding compound nouns (formed from sub­stantive stems), as a rule, cannot undergo the test into isolated elements quite easily.

As a part of speech, the noun is also characterized by a set of formal features determining its specific status in the lexical paradigm of nomination. It has its word-building distinctions, including typical suffixes, compound stem models, conversion patterns. It discriminates the grammatical categories of gender, number, case, article determination.

In synthetic languages nouns have multiple synthetic pa­radigms. Moreover, the paradigmatic noun-forms are syn­cretic. It follows that nounal categories are realized all to­gether by the same grammatical forms. Such grammatical forms occur as fused categorial forms.

Every nounal category is realized through the opposition of its own categorial forms: case-forms and number-forms, each having particular categorial markers for the signification of particular categorial case or number meanings.

The most commonly accepted division of nouns is that into 4 oppositional pairs:

- proper and common (with the foundation of this division being the type of nomination);

- animate and inanimate (on the basis of form of existence);

- countable and uncountable (on the basis of quantitative structure);

- concrete and abstract (on the foundation of the quality of substance)

13. VERB: ASPECT The marked member of the opposition is the perfect, which is built up by the auxiliary have in combination with the past participle of the conjugated verb.§ The category of retrospective coordination (retrospect) is constituted by the opposition of the perfect forms of the verb to the non-perfect, or indefinite forms.§ The categorial meaning of the continuous is "action in progress"; the unmarked member of the opposition, the indefinite, leaves this meaning unspecified, i.e. expresses the non-continuous.§ The marked member of the opposition is the continuous, which is built up by the auxiliary be plus the present participle of the conjugated verb.§ The aspective category of development is constituted by the opposition of the continuous forms of the verb to the non- continuous, or indefinite forms of the verb

VERB: ASPECT The passive form is alien to many verbs of the statal subclass (displaying a weak dynamic force), such as have (direct possessive meaning), belong, cost, resemble, fail, misgive, etc. Thus, in accord with their relation to the passive voice, all the verbs can be divided into two large sets: the set of passivized verbs and the set of non-passivized verbs.§ The verbal category of voice shows the direction of the process as regards the participants of the situation reflected in the syntactic construction: the category does not illustrate the properties of an action itself . The voice of the English verb is expressed by the opposition of the passive form of the verb to the active form of the verb.

VERB: VOICE Thus, the category of voice should be interpreted as being reflected in the whole system of verbs, the non- passivized verbs presenting the active voice form if not directly, then indirectly.§ Voice is interpreted rather as a full-representative category, the same as person, number, tense, and aspect, because the demarcation line between the passivized and non-passivized sets is by no means rigid, as the verbs of the non-passivized order may migrate into the passivized order in various contextual conditions (cf. The bed has not been slept in; The house seems not to have been lived in for a long time).

. VERB: VOICE Now I see your son is thoroughly preparing for the entrance examinations.The actions expressed by the verbs are not passed from the subject to any outer object; on the contrary, these actions are confined to no other participant of the situation than the subject, the latter constituting its own object of the action performance. This kind of verbal meaning of the action performed by the subject upon itself is classed as "reflexive". The same meaning can be rendered explicit by combining the verb with the reflexive "self"-pronoun.§ Im afraid Mary hasnt dressed up yet.§ I will shave and wash, and be ready for breakfast in half an hour

VERB: VOICEConsider the following examples: Are Phil and Glen quarrelling again over their toy cruiser?The actions expressed by the verbs are also confined to the subject but these actions are performed by the subject constituents reciprocally. This verbal meaning of the action performed by the subjects in the subject group on one another is called "reciprocal".As is the case with the reflexive meaning, the reciprocal meaning can be rendered explicit by combining the verbs with special pronouns, namely, the reciprocal pronouns: the friends will be meeting one another; Nellie and Christopher divorced each other; the children are quarrelling with each other.The verbs in reflexive and reciprocal uses in combination with the reflexive and reciprocal pronouns may be called, respectively, "reflexivized" and "reciprocalized". Used absolutively, they are just reflexive and reciprocal variants of their lexemes.§ Unfortunately, Nellie and Christopher divorced two years after their magnificent marriage.§ The friends will be meeting tomorrow.§ Consider the following examples:

§34. VERB: VOICE Perhaps the loin chop will eat better than it looks.The actions expressed by the otherwise transitive verbs are confined to the subject, though not in a way of active self-transitive subject performance, but as if going on of their own accord. The presentation of the verbal action of this type comes under the heading of the "middle" voice. The peculiarity of this voice is in the voice neutralization when the weak member of opposition does not fully coincide in function with the strong member, but rather is located somewhere in between the two functional borders.But all enumerated cases of voice alternations are only semantic variants of the grammatical active voice.§ Large native cigarettes smoked easily and coolly.§ The suggested procedure will hardly apply to all the instances.§ The new paper-backs are selling excellently

.§35. VERB: VOICEConsider the following examples: The functional opposition underlying the category as a whole is constituted by the forms of oblique mood meaning, i.e. those of unreality, contrasted against the forms of direct mood meaning, i.e. those of reality.§ The category of mood expresses the character of connection between the process denoted by the verb and the actual reality, either presenting the process as a fact that really happened, happens or will happen, or treating it as an imaginary phenomenon, i.e. the subject of a hypothesis, speculation, desire

A phraseological unit (PU) is “a block longer than one word, yet functioning as a whole. It is a semantically and structurally integral lexical collocation, partially or completely different from the meaning of its components”. (A.Kunin) Its main characteristic feature is that its meaning can’t infer from the sum of its components because each PU is characterized by a certain degree of cohesion or semantic integrity. The main features of PU are stability, semantic integrity and ready-made nature.

There exist different classifications of PU. According to I.R.Galperin’s classification of the English vocabulary all the PU can be subdivided into neutral, literary and non- literary PU.

Neutral PU:

Ex.: “to let the cat out of the bag”, “ups and down,” “at the eleventh hour”.

Idioms and set expressions impart local coloring to the text and make it sound more expressive. Ex.: Come on, Roy, let’s go and shake the dust of this place for good… (Aldridge) – Cf. … let us go and leave this place for ever. (Skrebnev, 2000) Some of them are elevated: an earthly paradise, to breathe one’s last; to play fiddle while Rome burns.

Among the elevated PU we can discern:

a) archaisms– to play upon advantage (to swindle), the iron in one’s soul (the permanent embitterment);

b) Bookish phrases - Formal (bookish PU):“to breathe one’s last (to die); “The debt of nature” (death), Gordian knot (a complicated problem);

c) Foreign PU – a propos de bottes (unconnected with the preceding remark, bon mot (a witty word).

Some are:

a) subneutral or familiar colloquial PU: to rain cats and dogs, to be in one’s cups (=to be drunk), big bug, small fry, alive and kicking, a pretty kettle of fish.

b) Jargon PU– a loss leader (an article sold below cost).

c) Old slang PU– to be nuts about, to kick the bucket, to hop the twig (to die).

Occasional PU are based on the following cases of violation of the fixed structure of a PU:

a) Prolongation: “He was born with a silver spoon in a mouth which was rather curly and large”.(Galsworthy)

b) Insertion: “He had been standing there nearly two hours, shifting from foot to unaccustomed foot”. (Galsworthy)

c) Substitution:“to talk pig (shop).”

d) Prolongation and substitution:“They spoiled their rods, spared their children and anticipated the results in enthusiasm”. (Galsworthy)

e) The author’s PU: “Oh, my ears and whiskers” (L.Carroll); “Too true to be good” (B.Shaw), The Gilded Age (The Golden Age.)

Date: 2016-03-03; view: 2882