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Pluralia tantum. It covers the names of objects consisting of several parts (jeans), names of sciences (mathematics), names of diseases, games, etc.

The nouns with homogenous number forms. The number opposition here is not expressed formally but is revealed only lexically and syntactically in the context: e.g. Look! A sheep is eating grass. Look! The sheep are eating grass

The category of case.

Case expresses the relation of a word to another word in the word-group or sentence (my sister’s coat). The category of case correlates with the objective category of possession. The case category in English is realized through the opposition: The Common Case :: The Possessive Case (sister :: sister’s). However, in modern linguistics the term “genitive case” is used instead of the “possessive case” because the meanings rendered by the “`s” sign are not only those of possession. The scope of meanings rendered by the Genitive Case is the following :

Possessive Genitive : Mary’s father – Mary has a father,

Subjective Genitive: The doctor’s arrival – The doctor has arrived,

Objective Genitive : The man’s release – The man was released,

Adverbial Genitive : Two hour’s work – X worked for two hours,

Equation Genitive : a mile’s distance – the distance is a mile,

Genitive of destination: children’s books – books for children,

Mixed Group: yesterday’s paper

Nick’s school cannot be reduced to one nucleus

John’s word

To avoid confusion with the plural, the marker of the genitive case is represented in written form with an apostrophe. This fact makes possible disengagement of –`s form from the noun to which it properly belongs. E.g.: The man I saw yesterday’s son, where -`s is appended to the whole group (the so-called group genitive). It may even follow a word which normally does not possess such a formant, as in somebody else’s book.

There is no universal point of view as to the case system in English. Different scholars stick to a different number of cases.

There are two cases. The Common one and The Genitive;

There are no cases at all, the form `s is optional because the same relations may be expressed by the ‘of-phrase’: the doctor’s arrival – the arrival of the doctor;

There are three cases: the Nominative, the Genitive, the Objective due to the existence of objective pronouns me, him, whom;

Case Grammar. Ch.Fillmore introduced syntactic-semantic classification of cases. They show relations in the so-called deep structure of the sentence. According to him, verbs may stand to different relations to nouns. There are 6 cases:

Agentive Case (A) John opened the door;

Instrumental case (I) The key opened the door; John used the key to open the door;

Dative Case (D) John believed that he would win (the case of the animate being affected by the state of action identified by the verb);

Factitive Case (F) The key was damaged ( the result of the action or state identified by the verb);

Locative Case (L) Chicago is windy;

Objective case (O) John stole the book.

The Problem of Gender in English

In Indo-European languages the category of gender is presented with flexions. It is not based on sex distinction, but it is purely grammatical.

According to some language analysts (B.Ilyish, F.Palmer, and E.Morokhovskaya), nouns have no category of gender in Modern English. Prof. Ilyish states that not a single word in Modern English shows any peculiarities in its morphology due to its denoting male or female being. Thus, the words husband and wife do not show any difference in their forms due to peculiarities of their lexical meaning. The difference between such nouns as actor and actress is a purely lexical one. In other words, the category of sex should not be confused with the category of gender, because sex is an objective biological category. It correlates with gender only when sex differences of living beings are manifested in the language grammatically (e.g. tiger - tigress).

Gender distinctions in English are marked for a limited number of nouns. In present-day English there are some morphemes which present differences between masculine and feminine (waiter — waitress, widow — widower). This distinction is not grammatically universal. It is not characterized by a wide range of occurrences and by a grammatical level of abstraction. Only a limited number of words are marked as belonging to masculine, feminine or neuter. The morpheme on which the distinction between masculine and feminine is based in English is a word- building morpheme, not form-building.

Still, other scholars (M.Blokh, John Lyons) admit the existence of the category of gender. Prof. Blokh states that the existence of the category of gender in Modern English can be proved by the correlation of nouns with personal pronouns of the third person (he, she, it). Accordingly, there are three genders in English: the neuter (non-person) gender, the masculine gender, the feminine gender.

1) The theory of positional cases (J.C. Nesfield, M. Deutschbein, M. Bryant) CASES: nominative, genitive, vocative, dative and accusative, and only the genitive case is an inflexional one.

The Nominative case (subject to a verb) Rain falls.

The Genitive case. I saw John’s father.

The Vocative case (address) Are you coming, my friend?

The Dative case (indirect object to a verb) I gave John a penny.

The accusative case (direct object, and also object to a preposition) The man killed a rat.

2) The theory of prepositional cases (G. Curme)

Cases: dative case (to + noun, for + noun) and genitive case (of + noun)

3) The limited case theory (H. Sweet, O. Jespersen, A.I. Smirnitsky, L.S. Barkhudarov) Cases: nominative case (weak member) and possessive (strong member of the opposition)

4) The theory of the possessive postposition or postpositional theory (G.N. Vorontsova) According to G.N. Vorontsova, there are no cases at all and ‘s is the postpositional element, which can be transformed: somebody else’s daughter – the daughter of someone else.

Noun g ender (g. Leech)

Human Non-human

• Masculine (boy, king) (stone, bird)

• Feminine (girl, queen)

• Dual (doctor, student)

• Common (baby, child)

• Collective (family, team)

5. Adjective. The category of degrees of comparison.

The adjective is a word expressing a quality of a substance.

§ 2. The adjective has the following morphological characteristics:

Most adjectives have degrees of comparison: the comparative degree and the superlative degree.^J

The comparative  degree  denotes a higher  degree of a quality.

She is taller than her sister. My box is smaller than hers.

The superlative degree  denotes the highest degree of a quality.

She is the tallest of the three sisters. Her box is the smallest of all our boxes.

(The noun modified by an adjective in the superlative degree has the definite article because the superlative degree of the adjective always implies limitation.)

Adjectives form their degrees of comparison in the following way:

1. by the inflexion -er, -est (synthetical way);

2. by placing more and  most  before  the  adjective  (analytical way).

Monosyllabic adjectives usually form their comparatives and superlatives in the first way, and polysyllabic adjectives in the second way.

The following polysyllabic adjectives, however, generally form their comparative and superlative degrees inflexionally:

1. Adjectives of two syllables which  end   in  -y,  -ow,  -er,   -le.

¹ Some adjectives have no degrees of comparison (see § 7). 48

Some adjectives  have irregular forms of degrees of comparison, e. g.:

good better (the) best

bad worse (the) worst

many, much         more (the) most

far old

(the) (the) {

little less (the) least

farthest furthest oldest eldest

f farther \ further ( older \ elder

6. Pronoun, its categories.

The pronoun is a part of speech which points out objects and their qualities without naming them.

Pronouns fall under the following groups:

1. personal pronouns: I, he, she, it, we, you, they

2. possessive pronouns: my, his, her, its, our, your, their; mine, his, hers, ours, yours, theirs.

3. reflexive pronouns: myself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, yourself (yourselves), themselves.

4. reciprocal pronouns: each other, one another.

5. demonstrative pronouns: this (these), that (those), such, (the) same.

6. interrogative pronouns: who, whose, what, which.

7. relative pronouns: who, whose, which, that, as.

8. conjunctive pronouns: who, whose, which, what.

9. defining pronouns: each, every, everybody, everyone, everything, all, either, both, other, another.

10. indefinite pronouns: some, any, somebody, anybody, something, anything, someone, anyone, one.

11. negative pronouns: no, none, neither, nobody, no one, nothing.

There is no uniformity of morphological and syntactical characteristics in the groups of pronouns. Some pronouns have the grammatical categories ofperson, gender, case, and number. The categories of Person and gender (in the third person singular) exist only in personal and possessive pronouns.

Pronouns as well as nouns have two cases but whereas some pronouns (e. g. personal pronouns and the relative and interrogative who) have the nominative (another term is 'subjective') and objective cases, others (e. g. indefinite pronouns such as somebody, reciprocal pronouns such as one another, negative pronouns such as nobody) have the common and genitive cases.

The category of number is found in demonstrative pronouns (this and that) and the defining pronoun other.

Many pronouns are characterised by double syntactical use (they may be used as subject, predicative, object, and at the same time as attribute). Here belong demonstrative pronouns, possessive pronouns, etc.

1. The personal pronouns are: I, he, she, it, we, you, they. The personal pronouns have the grammatical categories of person, case, number and (in the third person singular) gender.

The personal pronouns havetwo cases: thenominative case and theobjective case.

The nominative case: I, he, she, it, we, you, they.1

The objective case: me, him, her, it, us, you, them.2

2. Personal pronouns may have different functions in the sentence, those of subject, object, predicative

1. Reflexive pronouns have the categories ofperson, number, and gender in the third person singular.

1st person

2nd person

3rd person

SINGULAR

myself

yourself1

himself, herself, itself

PLURAL

ourselves

yourselves

themselves

1 The archaic pronoun of the second person singular is thyself.

2. Reflexive pronouns refer to the subject of the sentence in which they are used, indicating that the action performed by the doer passes back to him or is associated with him.

In the sentence they are usually used as direct objects.

In that moment of emotion he betrayed the Forsyte in him — forgothimself, his interests, his property — was capable of almost anything... (Galsworthy) (OBJECT)

Reflexive pronouns may be used as predicatives.

1. Reciprocal pronouns are the group-pronouns each other and one another. They express mutual action or relation. The subject to which they refer must always be in the plural.

"I didn't really know him," he thought, "and he didn't know me;

but we lovedeach other." (Galsworthy)

We haven't set eyes onone another for years. (Priestley)

Each other generally implies only two, one another two or more than two people:

He had never heard his father or his mother speak in an angry voice, either toeach other, himself, or anybody else. (Galsworthy) Seated in a row close toone another were three ladies — Aunts Ann, Hester (the two Forsyte maids), and Julie (short for Julia)... (Galsworthy)

It must be mentioned that this distinction is not always strictly observed:

I should have been surprised if those two could have thought very highly ofone another. (Dickens)

2. Reciprocal pronouns have two case forms.

Girls banged intoeach other and stamped oneach other'sfeet. (Mansfield)

The common case of reciprocal pronouns is used as an objcct.

The men were not grave and dignified. They lost their tempers easily and calledone another names... (London) Elizabeth and George talked and foundeach other delightful. (Aldington)

Thegenitive case of reciprocal pronouns may be used as an attribute.

At first it struck me that I might live by selling my works to the ten per cent who were like myself; but a moment's reflection showed me that these must all be as penniless as I, and that we could not live by, so to speak, taking inone another's washing.(Shaw)

1. The demonstrative pronouns are this, that, such, (the) same. The demonstrative pronouns this and that have two numbers:

this — these; that — those.

This is used to point at what is nearer in time or space; that points at what is farther away in time or space.

2. The demonstrative pronouns this and that are used as subjects, predicatives, objects, and attributes.

It's all right, but I'd rather try my hand at brokerage, I thinkthatappeals to me. (Dreiser) (SUBJECT)

1. Interrogative pronouns are used in inquiry, to form special questions. They are: who, whose, what, which.

The interrogative pronoun who has the category of case: the nominative case is who, the objective case whom.

1. Relative pronouns (who, whose, which, that, as) not only point back to a noun or a pronoun mentioned before but also have conjunctive power. They introduce attributive clauses. The word they refer to is called their antecedent. It may be a noun or a pronoun.

Relative pronouns can also refer to a clause (see ChapterXVII,The Complex Sentence, § 8).

Relative pronouns always perform some syntactical function in the clause they introduce.

Gemma, there's a man downstairswho wants to see you. (Voy- nich) (SUBJECT)

She flashed a look at himthat was more anger than appeal. (London) (SUBJECT)

1. Conjunctive pronouns (who, what, whose, which) not only point back to some person or thing mentioned before but also have conjunctive Power, introducing subordinate clauses (subject clauses, object clauses, Predicative clauses).1

1 See Chapter XVII, The Complex Sentence.

What June had taken for personal interest was only the impersonal excitement of every Forsyte... (Galsworthy) (SUBJECT CLAUSE)

What you want, in fact, is a first-rate man for a fourth-rate fee, and that's exactlywhat you've got! (Galsworthy) (PREDICATIVE CLAUSE)

I don't want to hearwhat you've come for. (Galsworthy) (OBJECT CLAUSE)

2. In the clause they introduce they perform different functions, those of subject, predicative, attribute, object.

What had made her yield he could never make out; and from Mrs. Heron, a woman of some diplomatic talent, he learnt nothing. (Galsworthy) (SUBJECT)

The defining pronouns are: all, each, every, everybody, everyone, everything, either; both, other; another.

1. All is a generalizing pronoun, it takes a group of things or people as a whole.