Материал: Грамматика зачет

Some nouns in the plural form change the pronunciation of their final consonant (voiceless into voiced consonant)

a) /s/ - /z/ e.g. house – houses

b) nouns ending in -th / θ / after long vowels and diphthongs change it in / ð /:

e.g. bath – baths

path – paths

c) But / θ / is always retained after consonants (including r) and short vowels:

e.g. Smith –Smiths

myth – myths month – months

birth – births youth – youths

II We add -es in the following cases:

1. if the noun ends in

- s bus – buses

- ss glass – glasses

- x box – boxes

- sh brush – brushes

- ch bench – benches

- tch match – matches

2. a) if the noun ends in –y, preceded by a consonant, -y is changed into –i + es

e.g. fly – flies

army – armies

lady – ladies

b) in proper nouns we add only –s

e.g. Mary – two Marys

c) if the final –y is preceded by a vowel we add –s only (except in nouns ending in –quy : soliloquy – soliloquies).

e.g. day – days, monkey – monkeys.

3. a) if the noun ends in –o preceded by a consonant, the plural form is generally formed by adding -es:

e.g. cargo – cargoes

hero – heroes

potato – potatoes

veto -vetoes

But:

piano – pianos

radio – radios

tango – tangos

solo – solos

photo – photos

kilo – kilos

soprano – sopranos

dynamo – dynamos

zero – zeros

concerto – concertos

b) in proper nouns we add only –s.

e.g. Eskimo – Eskimos Romeo - Romeos

c) All nouns ending in –o, preceded by a vowel form the plural in –s.

e.g. portfolio – portfolios

kangaroo – kangaroos

d) But there are a few nouns ending in –o which form the plural both with -s and -es.

e.g. mosquito – mosquito or mosquitoes

halo – halos or haloes

cargo – cargos or cargoes

3. a)The following nouns, ending in –f(-fe) change it into –v in the plural:

e.g. wife – wives

knife – knives

leaf – leaves

thief – thieves

calf – calves

life – lives

loaf – loaves

wolf – wolves

half – halves

shelf – shelves

sheaf – sheaves

self – selves

b) Some nouns take only –s in the plural:

e.g. roof- roofs

chief – chiefs

belief – beliefs

safe – safes

gulf – gulfs

proof – proofs

cuff – cuffs

handkerchief – handkerchiefs

cliff – cliffs

reef – reefs

c) There are some nouns ending in -f which have two forms in the plural.

e.g. scarf- scarf or scarves

hoof – hoofs/hooves

14. Comment on the formations of the plural form of the loan words (borrowings).

Greek Loan – Words

15. Comment on the use of the indefinite article with class nouns. Class nouns are used with the indefinite article:

1. When the speaker mentions a noun (which is countable) for the first time:

For lunch I had a sandwich and an apple.

It is also used in sentences beginning with “there is/was”:

There is a newspaper on the table.

2. When the speaker presents the object expressed by the noun as belonging to a certain class. In this case the indefinite article has the meaning of “якийнебудь”, “якийсь”, “один” (in the meaning of “деякий”):

A lady is calling you up, sir.

This is the nominating meaning as we give a name to an object we have in mind:

A man and a woman sat opposite us, but they did not talk.

We saw a house with a lawn in front of it.

When we want to emphasize that we can’t say exactly which person or thing we are talking about because we don’t know or can’t remember, we can use some instead of a/an with a singular noun:

I was asked a really difficult question by some student.

In the plural no article is used in this case. But if the idea of number is implied in the case of the nominating meaning plural nouns may be preceded by words like some, several, a few or by a numeral:

Two (some) men and two (a few) women sat opposite us

I liked the room because there were flowers in it.

"I have brought you some flowers..."

We sometimes use some or zero article with very little difference in meaning:

“Where were you last week?” “I was visiting (some) friends.” It makes no difference whether we are referring to particular friends (with some) or friends in general (with zero article)

3. With a predicative noun, when the speaker states that the object denoted by the noun belongs to a certain class (it is one of a class and has the meaning of “один з багатьох”):

Miss Sharp's father was an artist.

My husband is a sailor.

Tom is a very nice person.

This may be called the classifying meaning:

Her brother was a student at Balliol College.

His aunt, a woman of uncertain age, was also present at the ceremony.

In the plural neither the article nor the pronoun some is used:

wharf – wharfs/wharves

dwarf – dwarfs/dwarves

Her brothers were students at Balliol College.

They are good children, no doubt.

After the conjunction as a predicative noun is often used without an article:

She was engaged as governess.

4. When the noun is used in a general sense. What is said of one representative of a class can be applied to all the representatives of the class. The article has the meaning of “every”:

A good dog deserves a good bone.

A drowning man catches at a straw.

An actor must learn to live with criticism.

This is the generalizing meaning the indefinite article. It indicates that the following noun denotes a typical member of a class:

A cat is a domestic animal. (= Every cat is a domestic animal.)

A tiger is dangerous. (= Every tiger is dangerous.)

Plural nouns in the generalizing meaning are used without any articles:

Cats are domestic animals. Tigers are dangerous.

This use is common in explanations of meanings and in some dictionary definitions:

In grammar, a noun is a word which is used to refer to a person, a thing, or an abstract idea.

Note 1. You cannot use this pattern when you want to talk about the location or existence of a type of animal, thing or person; for example, you cannot say: “A ringtailed lemur lives in Madagascar”; you would have to say “Ringtailed lemurs live in Madagascar”.

Note 2. “Any” sometimes has a similar but more emphatic meaning:

The greatest threat to any actor is the presumption that knowledge can be automatically transposed into experience.

5. There are cases when the indefinite article preserves its old original meaning of “one”:

He had hardly spoken a word.

In such cases we can speak of the numeric meaning of the indefinite article:

An hour in the morning is worth two in the evening.

This meaning is generally found with:

 nouns denoting time, measure and weight:

A week or two passed.

"I'll overtake you in a minute," said Godfrey.

 in certain expressions of quantity:

a lot of, a couple, a great many, etc.

 in the pattern a…of with possessives, as in:

She’s a colleague of mine.

That’s a friend of Bill’s

 after a negative not:

not a word, not a thought, etc.

 in some setphrases: one at a time, at a draught

 the numerals hundred, thousand, million and the nouns dozen, score:

My new car cost a thousand pounds.

 in expressions of price, speed, ratio etc.:

16. Comment on the use of the definite article with class nouns.

The definite article is used both with singular and plural nouns. It has the specifying meaning and the generic meaning.

In the specifying meaning the definite article denotes that the following noun refers to a particular object (thing, person) or particular objects as distinct from all others of the same class:

Nothing was natural in the room except the plants.

The definite article is used in the generic meaning when reference is made to a class of objects as a whole:

The tiger is dangerous.

The cat is a domestic animal.

Class nouns are used with the definite article:

1. When the speaker mentions a noun for the second time:

For lunch I had a sandwich and an apple. The sandwich wasn’t very nice.

If it is clear what item the speaker is referring back to, he normally uses a pronoun:

I have bought a book. It cost $2.50.

He can also use another, more general noun:

There was an enormous cat crouching on the counter… The animal looked up at Mrs. Bixby.

Angelica took the shell in both her hands and we peered at the thing.

Sometimes, however, the noun with definite article should be repeated:

 when the first mention occurred a long time before and a pronoun or noun would not make a connection with it:

But then I came on a man playing a harp. It was a black harp… and the man was dressed as a gorilla!

 when the speaker is referring to one of two different people or things that have just been mentioned together:

Suddenly Marsha heard what sounded like a fight between a man and a woman. She tensed, prepared to call for help, till she realized that the woman seemed to be getting the better of it.

 when the speaker wants to add something to the noun:

The full development of an idea may well take years of hard work but the idea itself may arrive in a flash of insight.

 as a way of avoiding repeating a pronoun too often:

Lyn lived with her husband in a house that they had bought for a song in nearby Seyer Street. The house was cheap partly because it was falling down.

2. When the speaker and the hearer know what particular object is meant. No special indication is necessary:

What do you think of the table? (= the table we are looking at)

How did you like the play?

I have got the magazine.

Note. It should be borne in mind that, there is a difference between knowing what object is spoken about and knowing the object itself:

I. - I do not care to speak to the girl. I have never seen her.

- Won't you speak to her?

- But I do not know the girl either.

II. - Who told you about it?

- A girl.

- What girl?

- My sister.

In the first dialogue the speaker and the hearer do not know the person at all, but they know whom they mean, so the definite article is used. In the second the speaker knows the person, but he presents her to the hearer merely as one of a class, so the indefinite article is used.

3. When the speaker uses an attribute pointing out a particular object:

This is the house that Jack built.

4. When the situation itself makes the object definite and when the speaker wants to talk about something that is associated with an earlier item (even though he hasn’t mentioned it before) just to show that there is a relationship or association between the items: