Grammatical categories of the English noun and their expressing in the sentence

Grammatical categories of the English noun and their expressing in the sentence

Aralbay Abatov

A second-year masters’ degree student at the department of English Linguistics,

Karakalpak State University named after Berdakh

Scientific supervisor: f.i.k., dots., N. Yuldashov

Karakalpak State University named after Berdakh

Abstract:

It is certainly vital for communicating in any languages, humans are in need of all parts of speech, though one of the most indispensable parts is noun. Nouns are the most numerous class of words (42% of all words). This article is devoted to give information about English noun and grammatical categories such as number, case, gender as well as give examples illustrating the topic in detail providing different graphs.

Key words: possessive case, masculine, feminine, neutral, Singularia Tantum, synthetic language, syntactic function, countable and uncountable noun, morphology, inflexion, vocative case, accusative case.

Nobody can deny that the noun is a part of speech which unites words with the general categorical meaning of substance, or thingness. Grammatical categories of gender, number and case, characteristic of nouns in English, have long attracted the attention of both English linguists and their foreign colleagues. The study of the declension of all the names of the English language causes great difficulties for students who speak English as a second or foreign language. This is due to the fact that, although there is a concept of cases in English exists in other languages, case meanings are expressed not by endings, as in English, but by postpositions and nouns do not always change depending on the syntactic function. And in English, names do not change at all depending on the syntactic function, i.e. there are concepts of case and declension in the conventional sense. So, the task of the teacher is not to characterize any case, but to reveal to the students the very concept of the case form and the case system as a whole. Consequently, the class of nouns is constituted by the following grammatical categories: Number (singular, plural); Case (common and possessive); Gender (masculine, feminine, neutral.

The grammatical category of number in the English noun presents a specific linguistic reflection of quantitative relations between homogeneous objects of reality conceptualized by the human mind. It is constituted by the binary privative opposition of singular and plural forms. The Former refers to one thing; whereas the latter refers to more than one thing. When the noun or pronoun is the subject, then its number also affects the verb. Note the difference in number in the following examples:

Singular Plural

Note that the plural pronoun they is in the process of becoming singular in spoken English. For example, one might say: A person called and they did not leave their name.

This construction allows the speaker to avoid identifying the gender of the person and has been common in speech for many years. You should be aware, however, that some people still consider it unacceptable in formal writing.

From the point of view of their number characteristics the English nouns fall into two classes: countable and uncountable. Countable nouns are for things we can count using numbers. They have a singular and a plural form. The singular form can use the determiner "a" or "an". However uncountable nouns can not be used in plural form and with articles such as “a/an”. To illustrate this, I have a dog it means that I possess one dog. I have five dogs. I possess five dogs and dogs is in plural form and indicating several objects also we call it countable nouns. On the other hand, uncountable nouns such as Ernazar gave me some advice to get visa to the U.S. advice can not be used in plural form, as it is limited group.

Uncountable noun:

That woman is concerned about

T this issue.

Those women are concerned about this

issue.

She is concerned about this issue. They are concerned about this issue.

Abstract nouns:

Love, friendship,

Hope…

Materials:

Bread, butter,

sugar…

Names of science

&professional

activities:

medicine, math,

architecture...

Limited groups:

hair, information,

advice,

knowledge…

Nouns denoting

results of repeated processes: savings,

labours,

belongings.

Nouns of

multitude:

police, gentry,

poultry, cattle

Nouns of various

semantics: oats,

outskirts,

clothes…

Nouns denoting

objects consisting

of two parts:

trousers,

spectacles…

The second category of the noun is Gender that 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)

Common gender. Some nouns which can may both a female or a male person they belong to so call common gender (doctor, president). Animate nouns: he, she. Inanimate nouns - it. We need to mention is that English language is considered as one of the sexist language in use, therefore it is better to consider the nouns dividing into three categories such as male, female and neutral form.

As we see above noun possesses gender in terms of people, though some English animal names have female and male forms when we are aware of the sex of the animals.

Male Female Neutral

Actor Actress Actor

Chairman chairwoman Chair/ chairperson

headmaster headmistress Headteacher

Host hostless Host

policeman policewoman Police officer

Steward Stewardess Cabin attendant

Waiter Waitress Waiter If speaker does not know the sex of animals, they can call by neutral terms. For instance: There were loads of people out walking with dogs today.

In the middle of this park there was a lovely pond with ducks swimming on it.1

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.

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. 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.2

Nominative case: If a noun is used as the subject of a verb, it is said to be in the nominative case. Example: Mrs. Umida taught us English. The flower gives human a sense of fragrance. The term 'nominative' is used in English grammar to refer to the noun or pronoun that appears as the subject of the verb in a particular sentence. In other 1 Cambridge dictionary 2 London: Longman Group UK Limited. Rumjanceva, L., & Kalniòa, B. (2003). English Grammar: Morphology (Volume I).

Male Female

Bull Cow

Dog Bitch

Drake Duck words, the 'nominative case' denotes that the specific noun or pronoun is the subject of the sentence. It is also known as the subjective case.3

Dative case: if a noun is used as an Indirect object of the verb in a sentence, it is said to be in the dative case. Dative case is a grammatical case for nouns and pronouns. The case shows a noun's or pronoun's relationship to other words in the sentence. The dative case shows the relationship of an indirect object to a verb. An indirect object is the recipient of a direct object. For instance: Saparmurat has given Susan some amount.

Objective case: If a noun or pronoun is used as the object of a verb, it is said to be in the objective. To illustrate this, Mr. Alex conducted IELTS masterclass. The home provides a sense of safety. The boy ate an apple. 'an apple' is the object of the verb and therefore is in the objective case.

Possessive case: If a noun denotes the possession or ownership, it is said to be in the possessive or Genetive Case illustrating: This is Mrs. Shahknoz’s car. Mr. Saparmurat is Mrs. Umida’s husband. 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.

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).

Vocative case: If a noun is used to name or call a person or thing addressed, it is said to be in the Vocative case. For example: Boys, don’t go there. Ricky, please close the door. The vocative case is used for direct address. In other words, if you are speaking directly to someone, any term that you use to refer to them must be in the vocative. Usually you address someone by their name, but you might also use a term of endearment or an insult.

In conclusion, being aware of grammatical categories of English noun, English language learners’ may find easy to understand and apply noun as a part of speech into the usage of English. Identifying the information of grammatical consumption of noun, 3 Likaj, E., & Çabej, M. (2013). A Grammar of Contemporary English. London: Longman Group UK Limited. Rumjanceva, L., & Kalniòa, B. (2003). the readers can clarify categories of noun and make sentence grasping the main concepts of grammatical categories without errors.

REFERENCES

1. English Grammar: Morphology. Prishtina: University of Prishtina.

2. Likaj, E., & Çabej, M. (2013). A Grammar of Contemporary English.

3. London: Longman Group UK Limited. Rumjanceva, L., & Kalniòa, B. (2003). English Grammar: Morphology (Volume I).

4. Daugavpils: Saule. Sweet, H. (1892). A New English Grammar: Logical and Historical (PART I). Oxford: Clarendon Press.

5. Sweet, H. (1898). A New English Grammar: Logical and Historical

(PART II)

6. Lado R. Linguistic cross cultures. Applied linguistics for language teachers/ Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 1957