GENERAL CLASSIFICATION OF THE PARTS OF SPEECH

According to their meaning, morphological characteristics and syntactical functions, words fall under certain classes called parts of speech.

We distinguish between notional and structural parts of speech. The notional parts of speech perform certain functions in the sen­tence: the functions of subject, predicate, attribute, object, or adverbial modifier.

The notional parts of speech are:

(1) the noun;

(2) the adjective;

(3) the pronoun;

(4) the numeral;

(5) the verb;

(6) the adverb;

(7) the words of the category of state;

(8) the modal words;

(9) the interjection.

The structural parts of speech either express relations between words or sentences or emphasize the meaning of words or sentences. They never perform any independent function in the sentence. Here belong:

(1) the preposition;

(2) the conjunction;

(3) the particle;

(4) the article.

(1) Chapter I THE NOUN

§ 1.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, states, actions (kindness, strength, sleep, fear, conversation, fight), abstracted from their bearers.

§ 2. The noun has the following morphological characteristics:

1.Nouns that can be counted have two numbers:singular and
plural (e. g. singular: a girl, plural: girls).

2. Nouns denoting living beings (and some nouns denoting lifeless
things) have two case forms:the common case and the genitive
case.

It is doubtful whether the grammatical category of genderexists in Modern English for it is hardly ever expressed by means of grammatical forms.

There is practically only one gender-forming suffix in Modern English, the suffix -es, expressing feminine gender. It is not widely used.

heir — heir-ess

poet — poet-ess

actor — actr-ess

waiter — waitr-ess

host — host-ess

lion — lion-ess

tiger — tigr-ess¹

§ 3. The noun has certain syntactical characteristics.

The chief syntactical functions of the noun in the sentence are those of the subjectand the object.But it may also be used as an attribute ora predicative.

The sunwas rising in all his splendid beauty. (Dickens) (subject)

Troy and Yates followed the tourists.(Heym) (object)

He (Bosinney) was an architect... (Galsworthy) (predicative)

¹ Gender, i. e. the distinction of nouns into masculine, feminine and neuter,
may be expressed lexically by means of different words or word-compounds:
father —mother man—woman

boy —girl gentleman —lady

husband — wife cock-sparrow — hen-sparrow

boy-friend — girl-friend man-servant — maid-servant

Very often personal or possessive pronouns indicate the gender of the noun. (See Chapter IV.)

Mary brought in the fruit on a tray and with it a glass bowl, and a blue dish... (Mansfield) (attribute; the noun glass is used in the common case)

The hero and heroine, of course, just arrived from his father's yacht. (Mansfield) (attribute; the noun father is used in the genitive case)

A noun preceded by a preposition (a prepositional phrase) may be used as attribute, prepositional indirect object, and adverbial modifier.

To the left were clean panes of glass. (Ch. Bronte) к attribute) Bicket did not answer, his throat felt too dry. He had heerd of the police. (Galsworthy) (object) She went into the drawing-room and lighted the fire. (Mansfield)

(ADVERBIAL MODIFIER)

"Stop everything, Laura!" cried Jose in astonishment. (Mansfield)

(ADVERBIAL MODIFIER)

The noun is generally associated with the article. Because of the comparative scarcity of morphological distinctions in English in some cases only articles show that the word is a noun.

A noun can be modified by an adjective, a pronoun, by another noun or by verbals.

§ 4. Morphological composition of nouns.

According to their morphological composition we distinguish simple, derivative and compound nouns.

1 Simple nouns are nouns which have neither prefixes nor suf­fixes. They are indecomposable: chair, table, room, map, fish, work.

2. Derivative nouns are nouns which have derivative elements
(prefixes or suffixes or both): reader, sailor, blackness, childhood,
misconduct, inexperience. »

Productive noun-forming suffixes are:

-er: reader, teacher, worker

-1st: communist, telegraphist, dramatist

-ess: heiress, hostess, actress

-ness: carelessness, madness, blackness

-ism: socialism, nationalism, imperialism

Unproductive suffixes are;

-hood: childhood, manhood

■dom: freedom

-ship: friendship, relationship

-merit: development

-ance: -importance

-ence: dependence

-ty: cruelty

-ity: generosity

3. Compoundnouns are nouns built from two or more stems. Compound nouns often have one stress. The meaning of a com­pound often differs from the meanings of its elements.

The main types of compound nouns are as follows:

(a) noun-stem + noun-stem: appletree, snowball;

(b) adjective-stem-{-noun-stem: blackbird, bluebell;

(c) verb-stem + noun-stem: pickpocket; the stem of a gerund
or of a participle may be the first component of a compound noun:
dining-room, reading-hall, dancing-girl.

(a) § 5. Classification of nouns.

• Nouns fall under two classes: nouns.¹

(A) propernouns; (B) common

A. Proper nounsare 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 sandwichand a glass of champagne.(Aldington)

B. Common nounsare names that can be applied to any individ­
ual of a class of persons or things (e. g. man, dog, book), collec­
tions 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, collectivenouns, nouns of materialand abstractnouns.

Nouns may also be classified from another point of view: nouns denoting things (the word thing is used in a broad sense) that can be counted are called countablenouns; nouns denoting things that cannot be counted are called uncountablenouns.

1. Class nounsdenote persons or things belonging to a class. They are countables and have two numbers: singular and plural. They are generally used with an article.²

¹ The name proper is from Lat. proprius 'one's own'. Hence a proper name
means one's own individual name, as distinct from a common name, that can be
given to a class of individuals. The name common is from Lat. communis and
means that which is shared by several things or individuals possessing some

- common characteristic.

² On the use of articles with class nouns see Chapter II, § 2, 3.

"Well, sir," said Mrs. Parker, "I wasn't in the shopabove a great

deal." (Mansfield)

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

2. Collective nounsdenote 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)

Machinerynew 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 multi­
tude 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 crowdis 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 crowdsof people were already pouring from a variety of quarters. (Dickens)

3. Nouns of materialdenote material: iron, gold, paper, tea,
water. They are uncountables and are generally used without any
article. ^г

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

There was coffeestill in the urn. (Welts)

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

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

¹ On the use of articles with nouns of material see Chapter II, § 5, 6, 7.

Nouns of material may turn intoclass nouns (thus becoming countables) 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 glassof this ale." (Dickens)

But the person in the glassmade a face at her, and Miss Moss

went out. (Mansfield)

4. Abstract nounsdenote some quality, state, action or idea: kindness, sadness, fight. They are usually uncountables, though some of them may be countables (e. g. idea, hour).^J

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 ideaof plying to 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 sight

a beauty a sight

beauties sights

He was responsive to beautyand here was cause to respond.

(London)

She was a beauty.(Dickens)

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

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 3079