theoretical grammar 4

1.

The noun and its grammatical categories
Presented by Zhanna M. Sagitova

2.

The noun is a part of speech which unites
words with the general categorical meaning of
substance, or thingness. Nouns are the most
numerous class of words (42% of all words)

3.

The class of nouns is constituted by the
following grammatical categories:
Number (singular, plural);
Case (common and possessive);
Gender (masculine, feminine, neutral)

4.

Gender of nouns may be defined by 3 ways:
1)system of personal pronouns (he, she, it);
2) special suffixes -er(-or) , -ess (waitress);
3) lexical units which express the idea of
gender (niece – nephew; bull – cow)

5.

Common gender. Some nouns which can be
both a female or a male person they belong to
so call common gender (doctor, president).
Animate nouns: he , she. Inanimate nouns it.

6.

In English, the grammatical category of
"number" reflects the quantitative relationship
between similar objects in reality as perceived
by the human mind. This category is
expressed through two opposite forms:
singular and plural.

7.

From the point of view of their number
characteristics the English nouns fall into two
classes: countable and uncountable.

8.

Uncountable nouns are further subdivided into
two groups:
The group of Singularia Tantum includes:
Names of abstract notions (love, friendship);
Names of mass materials (bread, butter,
sugar);
Names of some collective inanimate objects
(foliage, machinery);

9.

Names of sciences and professional activities
(medicine, architecture);
Nouns of heterogeneous semantics. This is a
limited group and includes such nouns as:
hair, advice, knowledge, money, information,
news.

10.

The group of Pluralia Tantum nouns includes:
Nouns denoting objects consisting of two
parts (trousers, spectacles);
Nouns denoting results of repeated processes
(savings, labours, belongings);
Nouns of multitude (police, gentry, poultry,
cattle)
Nouns of various semantics (oats, outskirts,
clothes)

11.

The grammatical category of case in English
nouns.
Case is a grammatical category which marks
the semantic role of the noun in the sentence
and finds a grammatical expression in the
language.

12.

The roles played by the noun in the sentence
in its relations with the verb and other parts of
the sentence may find different expression in
different languages. In highly inflectional,
synthetic languages these relations are
expressed morphologically, by inflexions.

13.

Case relations may also be expressed
syntactically: by the position of the noun in
the sentence in its reference to the position of
the verb and also by prepositions which play
the same role as inflections.

14.

The category of case of the English noun is
constituted by the binary privative opposition
of the Common and Possessive cases. The
formal marker of the Possessive case is the
morpheme ‘s.

15.

The most common syntagmatic meanings of
the Possessive case are the following: pure
possessivity (my sister’s money); agent, or
subject of the action (my brother’s arrival);
object of the action (the criminal’s arrival);
authorship
(Shakespeare’s
sonnets);
destination (a sailor’s uniform); measure (a
day’s wait); location (at the dean’s);
description, or comparison (a lion’s courage).

16. Types of noun

All nouns can be divided into common and
proper nouns.
Common nouns can then be divided into
countable and uncountable nouns.
Both countable and uncountable nouns can
then be further divided into concrete and
abstract nouns.
We’ll look at each type in turn.

17. Common nouns

All nouns which are not proper nouns are
common nouns.
A few examples: cup, art, paper, work, frog,
bicycle, atom, family, mind.
Common nouns are either countable or
uncountable.

18. Proper nouns

Proper nouns start with capital letters.
They are the names of people, places, times,
organisations etc.
They refer to unique individuals.
Most are not found in the dictionary.
They often occur in pairs or groups.
Here are some examples.

19.

Tony Blair
The Jam
Oxfam
Coronation Street
Carly
Christmas
Keynsham
John
President Bush
Thames
Sony
China
Coca Cola
Bridget Jones
The Ford Motor Company
Macbeth
Saturn
Portugal
King Henry

20. First, look again at those types and how they relate.

proper
nouns
abstract
countable
concrete
common
abstract
uncountable
concrete

21. Countable nouns

Use these tests for countable nouns:
Countable (or just “count”) nouns can be made
plural: a tree… two trees; a man… men; a pony…
ponies.
In the singular, they may have the determiner a or
an: a sausage; an asterisk.
We ask: How many words/pages/chairs?
We say: A few minutes/friends/chips?

22. Uncountable nouns

Use these tests for uncountable nouns:
Uncountable (or non-count) nouns cannot be made
plural. We cannot say: two funs, three advices or
five furnitures.
We never use a or an with them.
We ask: How much money/time/milk?
(Not
How many?)
We say: A little help/effort. (Not A few.)

23. Dual category nouns

• Some nouns may be countable or uncountable,
depending on how we use them.
• We buy a box of chocolates (countable) or a bar of
chocolate (uncountable).
• We ask: How much time? but How many times?
(where times = occasions).
• We sit in front of a television (set) to watch
television (broadcasting).

24. Field-specific nouns

• Uncountable nouns are often turned into countable
nouns by specialists in a particular field.They
become part of the jargon of that specialism.
• Grass is usually uncountable but botanists and
gardeners talk about grasses.
• Linguists sometimes talk about Englishes.
• Financiers refer to moneys or even monies.
• Teas may be used to mean types of tea.

25.

Remember that both countable and uncountable nouns can
be divided into concrete and abstract nouns.
The distinction between concrete and abstract nouns is the
most important one of all when you are analysing linguistic
data. A lot of abstract nouns in a text will have a big impact
on its register.
The Plain English Campaign has an excellent website which
will tell you more about the stylistic impact of abstract
nouns.

26. Concrete nouns

• Concrete nouns are the words that most people
think of as nouns.
• They are mostly the names of objects and animals
(countable) and substances or materials
(uncountable).
• Cake, oxygen, iron, boy, dog, pen, glass,
pomegranate, earthworm and door are all concrete
nouns.

27. Abstract nouns

• Abstract nouns name ideas, feelings and
qualities.
• Most, though not all, are uncountable.
• Many are derived from adjectives and verbs
and have characteristic endings such as –ity,
-ness, -ence, and -tion.
• They are harder to recognise as nouns than
the concrete variety.

28. Abstract noun or adjective

• You won’t confuse abstract nouns with
adjectives, as long as you apply a few tests.
• Happy is an adjective. It behaves like one:
very happy; so happy; happier; as happy as
• Happiness behaves like a noun: The
happiness I feel; her happiness; great
happiness.

29.

A few more examples
Verb or adjective
Abstract noun
We were different
from each other.
The difference
between us.
My work is precise.
I work with precision.
The air is pure.
The purity of the air.
I composed this
tune.
This tune is my
composition.
It is so beautiful.
It has such beauty.
You support me.
The support you give me.

30. The morphology of nouns

• Nouns change their form for only two
grammatical reasons:
• Countable nouns have a plural form. This is
usually formed by adding –s, of course, but there
are some irregular forms.
• The possessive form of a noun is created by
adding –’s (Henry’s cat) or just an apostrophe (all
our students’ results).

31. Irregular plurals

• Some nouns retain plural endings from Old
English:
• Men, geese, mice, oxen, feet, teeth, knives.
• Loan words from Latin, Greek, French and Italian
sometimes keep their native ending:
• Media, bacteria, formulae, larvae, criteria,
phenomena, gateaux.
• Graffiti, an Italian plural, is now an uncountable
noun in English.

32. Noun phrases

• When we see a noun as performing a role in a
sentence, we think of it as a noun phrase.
• A noun phrase may function as the subject or
object of a clause.
• A noun phrase may consist of a single word (a
noun or pronoun) or a group of words.
• The most important noun in a noun phrase is
called the headword.

33. Examples of noun phrases (headword in brackets)

• (She) always bought the same (newspaper).
• A young (man) in a suit was admiring the
(view) from the window.
• Concentrated sulphuric (acid) must be
handled carefully.
• My old maths (teacher) was Austrian.

34. The syntax of noun phrases

• The headword of a noun phrase may be premodified by determiners, adjectives or other
nouns.
• For example, a large, dinner (plate).
• It may be post-modified by a prepositional phrase.
• This is simply a noun phrase with a preposition at
the beginning.
• For example, a (painting) by Rembrandt.
• Can you spot the modifiers in the last slide? (Left
arrow key takes you back)

35. Clauses modifying nouns

• We can use a clause (a group of words containing
a verb) to post-modify a noun.
• A clause which post-modifies a noun is called a
relative clause or adjectival clause.
• Here are some examples:
• This is the (house) that Jack built.
• (People) who live in glass houses should not throw
stones.

36.

Task 2. Identify nouns. Record them in groups assigning them to noun
classes.
Something about being alone in the too-quiet house scared me, so I sat on
the porch for a minute, but then I heard a man singing, singing in a high
voice that sounded all wrong, singing the same words over and over. “Oh
Stag-o-lee, why can’t you be true?” It was Stag, Pop’s oldest brother, with
a long walking stick in hand. His clothes looked hard and oily, and he
swung that stick like an axe. Whenever I saw him, I couldn’t never make
out any sense to anything he said; it was like he was speaking a foreign
language, even though I knew he was speaking English: he walked all
over Bois Sauvage every day, singing, swinging a stick. Walked upright
like Pop, proud like Pop. Had the same nose Pop had. But everything else
about him was nothing like Pop, was like Pop had been wrung out like a
wet rag and then dried up in the wrong shape. That was Stag. I’d asked
Mamonce what was wrong with him, why he always smelled like
armadillo, and she had frowned and said: He sick in the head, Jojo. And
then: Don’t ask Pop about this. (from “Unburied, Sing” by Jesmyn Ward
Sing)

37.

Task 3. Identify the following genitives.
Children’s demand, children’s education, children’s
toys, children’s language, children’s nursery,
children’s service, children’s diet, children’s verses.
His brother’s house, his brother’s friend, his
brother’s arrival, his brother’s business, his brother’s
generosity, his brother’s arrest, his brother’s article.
A mile’s trip, an hour’s detention, the town’s MP, the
union’s declaration.

38.

Task 4. Give the plural form of the following English
nouns:
Oasis, bacterium, larva, analysis, phenomenon,
encyclopedia, criterion, hypothesis, formula, basis,
genius, datum, thesis.

39.

Task 5. Give the forms of feminine or
masculine gender of the following nouns.
Count, hostess, waiter, actress, bridegroom,
widow, hero, uncle, bull, landlady, nephew,
wife, lioness, tiger, executor, mistress, heir,
witch.

40.

Task 6. Define the nouns in the following text, their gender and functions in a sentence. You don’t
know about me without having read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that
does not matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly.
There were things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. Now the way that the book winds
up is this: Tom and me found the money that the robbers had hidden in the cave, and it made us rich.
We got six thousand dollars apiece – all gold. It was an awful sight of money when it was piled up.
Judge Thatcher took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all year round.
The Widow Douglas took me for her son, and she said that she would civilize me; but it was a rough
living in the house all the time considering how dismally regular and decent the widow was in all her
ways; and so when I couldn’t stand it any longer I ran away. I got into my old rags again, and was
free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers,
and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went back.
The widow cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb. She put me in new clothes again, and I
couldn’t do anything but sweat and sweat and feel all cramped up. Then the old things commenced
again.
The widow would ring a bell for supper, and you had to come on time. When you got to the table,
you couldn’t go right to eating, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck her head and grumble a
little over the food.
After supper she would get out the Bible and read me about Moses, and I was in sweat; but by and by
she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerably long time; so I didn’t care any more about
him, because I don’t care about dead people. (After “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark
Twain)

41.

Task 7. Make compound nouns according to
the following models:
Noun + noun, noun + preposition, noun +
adjective, noun + verb, adjective + participle,
preposition + noun, participle + noun, verb +
preposition, word + preposition + word.

42.

Task 8. Explain the structure of the following
compound words:
Wheeler-dealer, bedroom, shoelace, hanger-on,
voice-over, passer-by, attorney general, poet laureate,
haircut, snowfall, redhead, whitewashing, onlooker,
washing
machine,
warm-up,
mother-in-law,
policeman, editor-inchief, dragonfly, nobleman,
black eye, undertone, outlet, breakwater, cookbook,
downtime, day off.

43.

Discussion on the article “Twenty-ThreeMonth-Old Children Have a Grammatical
Category of Noun” by Michael Tomasello and
Raquel Olguin

44.

•What are the main hypotheses proposed by Tomasello and
Olguin regarding toddlers and grammatical categories?
•How do the authors define "grammatical category" in the
context of their research?
•What methods did the researchers use to assess the
understanding of nouns in 23-month-old children?

45.

•How do the findings challenge or support existing theories of
language acquisition?
•In what ways do the results indicate that young children can
categorize words?
•What implications do these findings have for our
understanding of early cognitive development?

46.

•How do the authors argue that noun understanding might
influence overall language development?
•What role do social interactions play in the acquisition of
grammatical categories, according to the article?
•How might these findings inform strategies for teaching
language to young children?

47.

•What are some potential limitations of the study that the
authors acknowledge?
•How do the researchers address the variability in language
exposure among children?
•In what ways do Tomasello and Olguin suggest that noun
recognition might differ from verb recognition in early
language learning?

48.

•What further research could be conducted to expand on the
findings of this study?
•How might cultural factors influence the development of
grammatical categories in toddlers?
•What are the practical applications of understanding how
children categorize nouns?

49.

•How do Tomasello and Olguin’s findings relate to the
concept of linguistic universals?
•In what ways could the study inform interventions for
children with language delays?
•How do the authors interpret the significance of their findings
in relation to developmental milestones?

50.

•What are the ethical considerations of conducting research
with very young children?
•How could the concepts from this study be integrated into
early childhood education curricula?

51.

Thank you for your hard work