Collective Nouns and Nouns of Multitude

Certain nouns denoting groups of human beings (family, government, party, clergy, etc.) and also of animals (cattle, poultry, etc.) can be used in two different ways: either they are taken to denote the group as a whole, and in that case they are treated as singulars, and usually termed "collective nouns" (in a restricted sense of the term); or else they are taken to denote the group as consisting of a certain number of individual human beings (or animals), and in that case they are usually termed "nouns of multitude". The difference between the two applications of such nouns may be briefly exemplified by a pair of examples: My family is small, and My family are good speakers. 1 It is quite obvious here that in the one sentence the characteristic "small" applies to the family as a whole, while in the other sentence the characteristic "good speakers" applies to every single member of the family ("everyone of them is a good speaker" is what is meant, but certainly not "everyone of them is small").

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The category of case of nouns is the system of opposemes (girl-girl’s) showing the relations of the noun to other words in speech.

Case is one of those categories which show the close connection (a) between language and speech, (b) between morphology and syntax.

• The members of the case opposeme John-John’s are united paradigmatically on the basis of their syntagmatic differences.

• Though case is a morphological category it has a distinct syntactical significance. Common case ->а the functions of subject and object; possessive case а the function of an attribute.

The category of case of English nouns

It’s a form of a noun showing the relations of that noun to other words in the sent. It helps to define the syntactic function of the N. in the sent. It’s a morphological category in English, because it’s represented by dif. w-forms of one and the same noun. Most linguists regard it as such & agree that the Eng. noun has 2 distinct cases, because it has 2 distinct form cases.

The genitive case- is built up by the opposition of 2 forms (the com.case& the genet.case). The form of the gen. case is marked. The formal marker is the case morpheme is represented by a number of phonol. conditioned allomorphs [s, z, iz]. It’s characterized by a number of points limit in its use in the lang. Its mainly applied to names of human beings, but it can be used with some inanimate nouns: esp. denoting time & space relations (yesterday’s paper) and some adverbs…

The common case- this form is unmarked & is represented by a zero morpheme. In plural nouns the case morpheme & the number morpheme are very often expressed by one & the same morpheme “ ‘ “: boys’ toys. In nouns that build up the plural with the help of other means but “s” ( children, women) the case morpheme is expressed separately by the suffix ‘s which follows the morpheme of number.The mean-g of the common case is very broad & extensive, it simply shows that this or that N is non-genetive. It can be used in any syntactic positions in the sent. The use of nouns in the common case is very frequent (98%).

The method of transformational analysis: the mean-g of gen.case:

1. possessive (John’s car, the bird’s nest) = John has a car

2. the subjective genitive (doctor’s advice, my husband’s arrival). Can be transformed: the doctor adviced…- the doer/subject of the action

3. the objective mean-g (John’s punishment, surprise) 2 ways of transformation: John was punished, smb surprised John- the sufferer of the action.

4. adverbial genitive (2 hours’ work)

5. genitive of destination (men’s shoes)

The number of cases in Modern English: there are dif. views on this problem. Historically there was one common case system for both nouns & personal pronouns in old English. Some scholars try to introduce a 3 case system. According to them nouns & personal pronouns have nominative case. Other scholars(J.Curme): find 4 cases –nominative, genitive, dative, accusative. Prof. Voroncova thinks that the category of case doesn’t exist in English because it’s not a case inflection(окончания).

The Group Genitive When a single noun is used in the genitive this genitive is termed individual: Europe’sfuture, the horse’s tail. But the inflexion –‘s can refer to a phrase. This genitive is termed the group genitive. For example: John and Jack’s father ,the quarter of an hour’s sleep.

6/ The category of tense in English (as well as in Russian) expresses the relationship between the time of the action and the time of speaking. Accordingly there are three tenses in English – the present tense, thefuture tense and the past tense which refer actions to present, future or past time. Besides these three tenses there is one more tense in English, the so-called future in the past. The peculiarity of this tense lies in the fact that the future is looked upon not from the point of view of the moment of speaking (the present) but from the point of view of some moment in the past.

According to the concept worked out by Prof. Blokh, there exist two tense

categories in English. The first one – the category of primary time – expresses a

direct retrospective evaluation of the time of the process denoted. It is based upon

the opposition of past vs. present, the past tense being its strong member. The

second one – the category of “prospective time” – is based on the opposition of “after-action” and “non-after-action”, the marked member being the future tense.

The problem of the future tense: will+Infinitive.

• An instant or spontaneous decision to do something (We’ve run out of paper for the printer. – I’ll go and get some. I thinkI’llgohome.)

• Predictions of a general character (Over the next few years, interactive TV will make a great impact on consumer behavior, and advertisers will have to approach customers in a completely different way.)

• Requests, promises, threats, offering help, etc. (Will you give me a hand with those boxes? –Of course I will.)