The adjective is a notional part of speech, which describes person or thing denoted by the noun.

Notional parts of speech have their own lexical meaning, are changeable in most cases and have their own syntactic function.

Structural parts of speech denote relations / connections between notional parts of speech. They have very general lexical meaning, are unchangeable, and have no syntactic function of their own.

- What is the noun?

The noun is a notional part of speech with a lexico-grammatical meaning of substantivity (thingness).

- How are the nouns classified semantically?

Semantically all nouns can be divided into proper and common.

Proper nouns have unique reference (personal, geographical names...).

Common nouns can be concrete and abstract.

Common concrete nouns are further subdivided into class, material and collective nouns.

- What ways of forming the plural are there in English?

In English we distinguish regular plurals (cat-cats), zero plurals (deer) and irregular plurals (including foreign).

- What does the category of case in English show?

The category of case shows the relations between the nouns in the sentence.

- What is the difference between «‘s» genitive and an «of-phrase»?

Animate nouns usually take «‘s» inflection (Мary’s dress), though аn «of-phrase» can be used if the noun has modifiers (the toys of the youngest children).

The «of-phrase» is typical with inanimate nouns (a leg of a table) though «‘s» is often used when we speak about geography (Italy’s progress), time (a day’s work), transportation (ship’s crew), social / political / natural phenomena (the book’s success, sun’s rays) and set expressions (at a stone’s throw).

- What is the difference between «N+N» and «N’s N» structures?

In «N+N» structure the first noun can refer to any member of the class (dog food – for any dog), while in «N’s N» structure it refers to a concrete individual (a dog’s food – one concrete dog)

- What is the article?

The article is a structural part of speech which specifies the noun.

- What are the functions of the indefinite article?

The indefinite article has numerical (=”one”), classifying (= “one of many”) and generic (representative of the whole class) functions with common nouns and may realize aspective function when used with abstract nouns (His love gave her a wonderful happiness).

- What are the functions of the definite article?

The definite article fulfils individualizing (unique object) and generic (Tiger / compared to other felines / is the biggest wild cat) functions.

- What is the adjective?

The adjective is a notional part of speech, which describes person or thing denoted by the noun.

- What is the difference between relative and qualitative adjectives?

Qualitative adjectives denote qualities of size, shape, colour etc. that may vary in degree (little, warm, high…).

Relative adjectives denote qualities indirectly through relations to materials (silken), place (Italian), time (weekly)… These qualities do not vary in degree.

- What is the only grammatical category of the adjective that has survived into Modern English?

The only grammatical category of the adjective that has survived into Modern English is that of comparison. There are three degrees of comparison – the positive (absolute), the comparative and the superlative.

- What is a substantivized adjective?

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 2295