13. The number category of the noun.

The category of number is expessed by the opposition of the pl. form of the noun and sig form. The strong member is pl. the weak is sing. The productive ways of expressing the number is the suffix –(e) s (dog-dogs). The other ways are vowel interchange:man-men; the archaic suff.: ox-oxen and suffixes of borrowed nouns:formula-formulae. The cases of homonymy (sheep-sheep, fish-fish). The semantic nature of the difference between pl and sing presents difficulty of interpretation. ex.: three houses and three hours.

Three houses are three separate objects are three hours a continuous period of time as well as three miles. Here we distinguish ‘discrete plural’ and ‘plural of measure’. ex.:water-waters of the Atlantic. Here we refer to a geographical idea, while the water of the Atlantic refers to its physical or chemical properties. Here we see an additional difference of meaning. Talking about the number we’re to mention the process of lexicalization, the essence of which is developing a completely new meaning of the noun in pl. ex.: custom-customs.

2 types of nouns: Pluralia Tantum and Sing. Tantum. Among the PT are nouns:trousers, scissors… The direct opposition of PT is ST. Among ST are some nouns denoting material substance, milk, butter, and names of abstract notions-peace, usefulness. (with these nouns the predicate verb is alm.??? sing). But there are exceptions when such nouns may have a pl.form:ex: wine-wines(to denote several kinds of wine); beauty-beauties; iron-irons.

Acc. to Blokh we should distinguish absolute pl, the absolute pl. form is particular to the uncountable subclasses of PT nouns. The absolute pl. cannot directly combine with numerals. The absolute pl. by way of functional opposition reduction can be presented in 3 ways: 1) In count. nouns having the form of sing.(ex. the family were gathered round the table). 2) In uncount. nouns having the form of the pl.(ex. the waters of the ocean). 3) In countable nouns in repetition groups( There were trees and trees are around us).

13. The theory of positional cases.

Case is the category of a noun expressing relations between the thing denoted by the noun and other things, or properties, or actions, and manifested by some formal sign in the noun itself. Approaches to the category of case in English:

• English has 2 cases(the limited case theory)

• The number of cases are more than 2 (the theory of positional cases).

• There are no cases at all with English nouns.

• These approaches are possible due a different interpretations of case as a gr. cat.).

The theory of positional cases comes from OE : the unchangeable forms of the noun are differentiated as diff. cases due to functional positions of the noun in the sentence.

There are : besides Genitive case also:

Nominative(the noun is subject), Dative( I gave him), Accusative(I gave a book), Vocative.

The number of cases can be reduced to 3 –N, G and Objective in acc. with pronouns I-me.

Acc. to Lyons: 1)Nominative (Bill died) 2) Acc.( John killed Bill) 3) D. (John gave the book to Tom) 4) Genitive (It’s Harry’s pencil) 5) Instrumental( John killed Bill with a knife) 6) Agentive ( J. was killed by Bill with a knife) 7) Comitative (J went to town with Mary).

The weak point: lies in the fact that they substitute the functional characteristics for the morphological features of the word class.

The strong point: it rightly illustrates the fact that the functional meaning can be expressed in language by other gr.means, in particular, by word-order (rose garden- garden rose).

№15 The theory of prepositional cases.

In accord with the prepositional theory, combinations of nouns with prepositions in certain object and attributive collocations should be understood as morphological case forms. To these belong first of all the "dative" case (to+Noun, for+Noun) and the "genitive" case (of+Noun). These prepositions, according to G. Curme, are grammatical elements equivalent to case-forms.

There can be as many cases as there are prepositions.

ex.: of Peter; with Peter; to Peter.

gramm.category To John –prep has lex meaning. but is doing – doesn’t have any lex-meaning.

Weak points: 1) There can be no oppositions, tey are synonyms.

2) A paradigm is limited and there are too many prepositions.

3)Prepositions are not empty words, they are relational words.

4)Each prepositional phrase would bear then another, additional name of "prepositional case", the total number of the said "cases" running into dozens upon dozens without any gain either to theory or practice.