Article

Noun.

Analyse all the synthetical forms you find in the texts given below (define these forms, state in what way they are built up).

They were simple poems, of light and colour, and romance and adventure. "Sea Lyrics^, he called them, and he judged them to be the best work he had yet done.

There were thirty, and he completed them in a month, doing one a day having done his regular day's work of fiction, which day's work was the equivalent to a week's work of the average successful writer. The toil meant nothing to him. (J.London, "Martin Eden")

Lecture 6 Theme: Parts of speech.

Plan:

1. Noun:

a) general characteristics;

b) classification of nouns;

c) number in nouns;

d) case in nouns;

e) article (general characteristics, "zero" article, peculiarities of its use).

2. Verb:

a) general characteristics;

b) tense;

c) aspect;

d) mood;

e) voice.

Recommended Literature:

1. M.Y.Blokh. A Course in the Theoretical English Grammar. - M., 1983,
pp.49-85, 85-92, 137-152, 155-166.

2. B.Ilyish. The Structure of Modern English. - L., 1971. - p. 76-89.

3. N.M.Rayevska. Modern English Grammar. - K., 1976. - p. 72-88, 99-107,
130-159.

4. И.П.Иванова, В.В.Бурлакова, Г.Г.Почепцов. Теоретическая граматика.
-p.2 1-34, 46-60.

Noun is a notional part of speech, having the categorial meaning of substance or thingness (water, school);

- the changeable forms of number (schools);

- of case (the teachers' room);

- specific derivational suffixes:

- er/or (worker, operetor), - ist (alarmist),

- ess (actress), - ее (employee),

- ness (happiness), - ion/-ation/ -ition (dictation, accusation),

- ity {fraternity), - ism (socialism),

- ance (ignorance), - ment (assignment);

- the substantive functions in the sentence:

- the subject (The testimony was false),

- the object (/ encountered the lawyer),

- a substantival predicative (He was a judge);

- prepositional connections (a man of action);

- modified by an adjective (a smart student);

- determined by an article (a teacher, the form);

- 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.

Could it be a man?

Sex-indicators: boy-friend, gH-friend, landlord, landlady, he-dog, she-dog, actor, actress, lion, lioness.

Number in nouns:

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.

- 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).

The Problem of a "Zero" Article

"A word can be found in the sentence or can't be but it can't be expressed by a zero" (Ilyish). Some other linguists are of the opinion that the cases of non-use of the article are subject to no less definite rules than the use of it (Blokh). But are these rules determined by the absence of the article or by the context, by some stylistic purposes or some other extra linguistic factors?

Omission of the article out of stylistic considerations in telegraphic speech, titles, headlines, announcements, etc.: Meeting adjourned until 14; in various combination of fixed type: at hand, day and night, out of the question, on the one hand, have a look.

Article is characterized by the semantic factor: it discloses the informational characteristics that the article conveys to its noun in concrete contextual conditions.

The definite article serves as an indicator of the information which is presented as the "facts already known", i.e. as the starting point of the communication (the theme).

The indefinite article or the meaningful absence of the article the central communicative nounal part of the sentence i.e. the part rendering the immediate informative data (the rheme) to be conveyed from the speaker to the listener. The definite article occupies all the linguistic space which can't be occupied by the indefinite article introducing new information (Katznelson).

Article is a means of referring the notion of the object to a speech situation:

indefinite - something new, not known:

definite - something mentioned or known from the situation (Ivanova).

Abstract and material nouns may be used with the article if there is a limiting attribute:

The light in the window was a kind of warning for me.

We must economize on light.

Proper nouns are sometimes used with the article too: the Browns (the whole family); the Brown I knew (a limiting attribute); a Mr, Brown (certain, unknown, new).

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