- combinability with a verb (The teacher gives instructions in English).
In the combination "stone wall" the noun "stone' is an attribute to the noun 'wall', but this function is typical of adjectives.
Nouns may be classified into: common (general meaning: The man put his life at stake), proper (definite meaning, the name of a separate human being, animal, thing: Mr. Brown); animate (a woman); inanimate (a book); countable (fault-faults), uncountable (milk).
Gender in nouns is expressed lexically:
- feminine - The girl quitted singing.
She is more interested in drawing;
- masculine - The man resented it.
He suggested a new idea.
- neuter - Something emerged from behind the door.
Singular (fault) - plural (faults); singular is more generalized, plural is always concrete. Singularia tantum (foliage) - pluralia tantum (trousers).
Russian: листва - деньги
Ukrainian: листя — гроші
Two forms may be interchangeable: He has no brains or little brain. Rack your brains about it. He has something on the brain.
Plural forms may be used for stylistic purpose: a thousand pities, full of fears, the blue waters of Mediterranean.
Russian: Повсюду страсти роковые и от судеб защиты нет. Синие воды Средиземного моря. Пески Сахары.
Ukrainian: Сині води Середземного моря. Піски Сахари.
German: die Sande, die Wasser.
Double plurals:
brothers (sons of one mother) brother /
^^Чэгешгеп (members of one community)
cloths (kinds of cloth) cloth <^
"^ clothes (article of dress) Russian: Ukrainian:
<
зубы (во рту) листя (дерева)
лист<^ зубья (пилы) ^^ листи (заліза)
Noun may approach adverbs: life long, dog tired, silver grey, etc. He was stone deaf to my request.
Case in nouns.
Case is a morphological category which denotes different relations of noun in the sentence and thus, the relations must be introduced in the form of the noun itself. All the other means (prepositions, word order) are not morphological, are not the forms of case.
The opposition - Common: :Possessive
: : 's (s') cs (s') is used with lifeless things as well: a week's notice, 5 miles' distance.
ARTICLE
- a functional part of speech;
- a determining unit of specific nature accompanying the noun, the ordinal numeral, the substantivized adjective/participle;
- expresses the specific limitation of the substantive function.
What is article:
1) a special grammatical form of the noun as a component of a definite morphological category, an analytical form oh the noun;
2) a separate word, a lexical unit in the determiner word set of a more abstract meaning than other determiners and article+noun is a peculiar phrase.
If the article is an analytical form of the noun, then it must be devoid of any lexical meaning.
Compare: / shall walk my dog ('shall' is the form marker of the future tense of the verb "walk');
There is a walk in the garden, ('a' adds some lexical meaning to the noun 'walk' - one, some walk).
Article can be substituted for a demonstrative determiner without causing a principal change in the general indication of the construction: It is the white girl who is to blame for it.
this He defended a Negro.
some
"A" indicates the category of indefiniteness, "the" - the category of defmiteness. The grammatical meaning:
the - the identification (individualization) of the referent denotes the concrete, individual quality of the object, a - a classifying generalization of the referent in a relatively general sense.
Article is a separate word, has a lexical & grammatical meaning, performs a peculiar function in the sentence only when combined with noun {the eyewitness, a friend), adjective {the best, the white), participle II {the wounded), numeral {a first, the first, a hundred) and in some word combinations {a lot of, a great deal of a few, a little).