Number

NOUNS

The problem of the category of gender.

II. Grammatical categories of nouns (gender, number, case).

As far as grammatical category of gender is concerned, opinions differ. A.I.Smirnitsky in his “Morphology of English” proves the non-existence of gender in English either in the grammatical or even in the lexico-grammatical sense. M.A.Ganshina and N.M.Vasilevskaya deny grammatical gender, but present a description of gender distinctions of English nouns. Blokh thinks that category of gender has a grammatical relevance in English.

Category of gender is expressed in English by the obligatory correlation of nouns with the personal pronouns of the third person. These pronouns serve as specific gender classifiers of nouns.

Logically, we can represent the grammatical meaning of gender in the following way:

animate inanimate

1. masculine 2. feminine 3. neuter (3 genders)

A great many person nouns in English are capable of expressing both feminine and masculine genders. These are referred to as nouns of the “commongender”: e.g. parent, friend, doctor, president.

In English there are no morphological markers of gender distinctions (Cf. special grammatical endings in Russian, special articles in German and French). So the idea of gender in English is indicated lexically. There are several methods:

1) Lexical (special pairs of words) e.g. a boy – a girl;

a man – a woman

2) Word-combining e.g. he-goat – she-goat

Tom-cat – Pussy-cat

3) Derivational suffixes e.g. lion - lioness

host – hostess

Sometimes an inanimate object can be personified and treated as a living-being. Usually it depends on traditions.

e.g. Names of vehicles or ships are thought to be Fem.

Names of countries (Egypt, Israel) are also Fem.

Such words as “anger, danger, war, death” are treated as Masc.

Nouns of strength, fairness are treated as Masc.

Nouns of beauty, tenderness – Fem.

Sometimes it depends on the author what gender a noun is referred to: e.g. Oscar Wilde’s “Happy Prince” – the Swallow – masc., the Reed – fem.

It is treated traditionally as a grammatical category expressing the difference between one object and more than one. The grammatical category of number operates in nouns, verbs, pronouns. In Modern English it is revealed through the binary opposition: oneness – more-than-oneness, e.g. boy – boys; dog – dogs.

The second elements of the oppositions (which are the strong ones) are marked by the morpheme –s which is used to express plurality in Modern English. The productive formal mark –s correlates with the absence of the number suffix in the singular form of the noun.

The other, non-productive ways of expressing the number opposition are:

- vowel interchange (man – men, tooth – teeth);

- the archaic suffix –en (oxen, children, brethren);

- original suffixes of the borrowed words (nucleus – nuclear, formula – formulae, phenomenon – phenomena).

In some cases the plural form of the noun is homonymous with the singular form (ship, fish, deer, etc.). Sometimes the ending -s doesn’t serve to reveal the grammatical category of number: e.g. names of sciences: physics, linguistics. Sometimes the form with –s becomes a new word: that is in the case of lexicalisation of grammatical forms.

e.g. colour – colours (flag); pain – pains (effort)

In this case –s can be treated as a derivational morpheme.

Nouns fall under 2 classes: countables and uncountables. Uncountable nouns stand outside the grammatical category of number. Nevertheless, they have a certain number form. Namely, the singular uncountable nouns are modified by the modifiers much and little, and they take the finite verb in singular, while the plural uncountable nouns take the finite verb in the plural.

The two subclasses of uncountable nouns are usually referred to as singularia tantum (only singular) and pluralia tantum (only plural).

Singularia tantum or “absolute” singular is characteristic of:

- abstract nouns (peace, love, joy);

- names of professional activity (chemistry, architecture);

- names of materials (wood, metal, steel);

- names of collective inanimate objects (fruit, furniture, machinery).

The absolute plural is characteristic of the uncountable nouns which denote objects consisting of the halves (trousers, tongues, spectacles); nouns expressing some sort of collective meaning (outskirts, clothes, earnings, contents, police, cattle).

Professor Isachenko doesn’t agree with the traditional treatment of the category of number. He thinks that at the bottom of this category doesn’t lie the idea of quantity, but the idea of discreteness. The objects which consist of indistinguishable parts are treated as belonging to a singular number.

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