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NOUNS
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A noun tells us what someone or something is
called.
a noun can be:
the name of a person (John)
a job title ( a doctor)
the name of a thing ( radio)
the name of a place ( London)
the name of a quality (courage)
the name of an action (laughter/laughing).
Nouns are the names we give to people, things,
places etc. in order to identify them
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Nouns are designators used to refer
to objects (referents) of
extralinguistic reality.
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morphological point of view:
nouns are characterized by
grammatical categories
(sometimes called secondary
grammatical categories) which are
actually certain generalizations
which are made about the
properties that nouns exhibit.
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English nouns exhibit categories of
countability
number
determination
gender
case
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PROPER
NOUNS
CONCRETE
COUNT
ABSTRACT
COMMON
CONCRETE
UNCOUNT/
MASS
ABSTRACT
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NOUN CATEGORIES:
GENDER
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the most controversial of all
noun categories
Introduction of some changes in
the existing system of gender
categories
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Slovak nouns
as masculine, feminine or
neuter.
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In English, nouns are not divided
into gender groups equivalent to
Slovak ones.
Gender plays only a minor role in
the system of English grammar –
the few gender distinctions that are
made are manifested in the use of
pronouns and in reference to
nouns.
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personal
Animate
Nouns
Nonpersonal
Inanimate
-Masculine
-Feminine
-Dual
-Common
-Collective
uncle
aunt
doctor
baby
family
who - he
who - she
who – he/she
who – he/she/it (which)
which-it (who/they)
-Masculine
higher animal
bull
which – it (who – he)
cow
which – it (who – she)
horse
ship
ant
which – it (who – he/she)
which - it
which - it
-Feminine
higer animal
-Common
higer animal
-Higer organism
-Lower animal
-
Inanimate – box
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1.Personal masculine/feminine nouns
form pairs:
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a/Without marked morphological differentiation
(i.e. different lexical units):
man/woman,husband/wife, sir/madam
b/ with marked morphological differentiation (i.e.
derivational relationship, masculine is unmarked,
suffixes – ess, ine, ette)
derivational suffixes – emperor/emperess,
hero/heroine
compound nouns – man teacher/woman teacher
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In some exceptions, feminine nouns may
be unmarked – widow/widower
Some nouns do not have a counterpart of
the opposite gender (dandy)
Many animal names follow the above
classification:
Stallion /mare, he-goat/she-goat
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2. dual (superordinate) term
(parent for father/mother)
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increasing use of dual nouns (author) with which
the gender is indicated only from the pronominal
reference.
The author says she is working on another novel.
The reasons for this are claimed to be the
elimination of the existing asymmetries in
language (e.g. unmarked noun = masculine,
marked = feminine)in an effort to fight
stereotypes and bias, such as sexism, or the fact
that some derived nouns may have acquired
unfavorable connotations over time.
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Sometimes explicit gender
reference with dual nouns is needed
(nurse – male nurse)
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3.Common and collective nouns
have both personal and nonpersonal reference, though not in
all contexts.
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In the former case, familiarity or
emotional involveness – positive
emotional attitude - is decisive
(child = she or he not it).
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In the latter, the opposition of
individuality (personal reference,
plural concord) or collectivity
(non-personal reference = singular
concord) is at play.
The jury have (= they)/ has
(=it)returned the verdict of
guilty.
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4. Higher animal (i.e. domestic, farming
animals, pets ) nouns follow :
 morphologically unmarked
(buck/doe)
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marked masculine/feminine
distinction.
(tiger/tigress )
 In case the gender distinction is
irrelevant, one term is used for both
sexes (lion for lion/lioness).
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5.Common higher animal nouns
include those of which no distinction
is made
We went to see the Peterson´s
horse which they bought only
recently.
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6. Higher organisms are represented by
a/ names of countries (geographical
units – inanimate,
political/social/economic units – personal
feminine, in sports – personal collective,
in all cases non-personal relative pronoun
used)
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7. Lower (less familiar) animals as well as
inanimate nouns have identical nonpersonal reference.
Occasionaly, a gender distinction may be
made by means of compounding. (hegoat/she –goat)
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A closely related problem to the
category of gender is the claim
that English is a sexist language
because it reinforces existing
societal gender stereotypes and is
used as a tool of verbal abuse,
which may easily lead to physical
abuse.
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Among the very often quoted examples belong:
- Professor is male, nurse female
- The word man widely used in compound nouns
(postman) exclude females
- there is no gender-neutral (non-sexist) 3rd
person pronoun , though many suggestions have
been made to fill the gap, for example, the
proposed words include : co, et, han, heris, herm,
hesh, jhe, na person, she/he, (s)he, she or he,
sher, shim etc.
- female nouns ending in suffixes –ess, -ette are
formed from unmarked male nouns,
- many female nouns have acquired demeaning
undertones (lady)
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The proponents of non-sexist usage suggest the
following solutions:
replace the word man when it is not meant to
include males only with human – humankind,
use male/female only when referring to sex
distinctions
in compounds, use woman only to clarify the
meaning
when reffering to man as a species, use ancestors,
forebears, human society
eliminate the use of discriminatory derivational
suffixes – ess
use one instead of exclusive he
Anyone can present their ideas in public.
instead of
Anyone can present his/her ideas in public.
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CASE
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the position of the category in
English is quite specific, as
syntactical relations are realized
analytically by word order and
prepositions rather than by noun
inflections which have been lost in
the course of the historical
development of English.
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As a result, the inventory of ModE
inflectional case endings is limited
to the ´s genitive the sole survivor
from the OE synthetic declensional
system of nouns.
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Also called possesive case (or
Saxon genitive), ´s genitive forms
a two-member category with
common case, in which the latter
is the unmarked member.
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As the functions of the ´s genitive
are by no means exhausted by that
of denoting possession, sometimes
the term adnominal case is
preferred.
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Besides adnominal inflectional
case, of-genitive (a
postmodifying of phrase) is also
used to signal case distinction in
English.
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As to the form of the ´s genitive,
it is homophonic with the regular
plural ending –s and pronounced s,
z , iz depending on the preceding
sound
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In writing, on singular nouns it is
marked by the apostrophe and the suffix
(a girl’s dream),
on regular plural nouns only
by the apostrophe (zero genitive ,
students´ essays)
on irregular plurals, it is
marked exactly as on regular singular
nouns (children’s toys)
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Some nouns ending in s,
sometimes admit only the
apostrophe while retaining ziz or
iz pronunciation.
Charles´ visits abroad, Keats´
books
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Mary and Jane´s friends
Mary´s and Jane´s friends
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Mary and Jane´s friends (the
friends they share)
Mary´s and Jane´s friends
(Mary´s friends and Jane´s
friends, not shared)
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´s genitive has several features in common
with adjective-forming suffixes and thus it is
possible to view it as on of them, not as a case
ending of the noun.
It always precedes the modified head noun,
and it can be attached to the whole phrase group genitive if the semantic feature applies
to both NPs together.
If the feature applies to the NPs individually, the
-´s morpheme is used with each
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Double genitive:
combines adnominal and of-genitive
typical construction – a book of Peter´s =
one of Peter´s books.
Other possible determiners are demonstratives,
and wh- determiners, but not the.
That crazy idea of Peter’s drives me mad. –
criticism
Peter’s crazy idea. – used in preference
+The crazy idea of Peter’s.+
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In some cases, ´s genitives and
postmodifying of-phrases are used
indiscriminately
The ship´s name, the name of
the ship
With ´s genitive being more
compact and economical.
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In most cases though, the two
genitives have a separate range of
uses:
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a/The ´s genitive case (adnominal
case) is used only with a subclass of
nouns (mainly those denoting
humans) and with the other nouns the
same meaning is expressed by and of
– genitive.
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b/ register (all registers prefer – of
genitives, ´s genitives are most
frequent in news writing)
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c/ type of dependent noun
´s genitives are used primarily with
animate nouns – personal names and
proper nouns, higher animal nouns (lion´s
den), collective nouns (the jury´s decision)
Some special types of inanimate nouns,
esp. those admitting personification
(geographical names – Europe´s turbulent
times), locative nouns (university´s staff),
temporal nouns (this year´s unemployment
rate) or set expressions ( a dollar´s worth
trinkets)
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Of genitives are used primarily with
inanimate concrete nouns (the door of the
bus)
Abstract impersonal nouns ( a feeling of
sadness)
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d/semantic relation between the
head and the dependent phrase:
´s genitive is commonly used as
possessive genitive (my family´s
savings),subjective genitive (my
mother-in-law´s arrival), objective
genitive (the dean´s election),
genitive of origin (senator´s fault),
descriptive genitive (a winter´s tale),
a genitive of measure (a few minute´s
walk)
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