Теоретическая грамматика английского языка (Theoretical Grammar of the English language)

The syntactic (monodifferential) classification of words is based on syntactic featuring of words only. The syntactic classification of words, in principle, supplements the three-criteria classification specifying the syntactic features of parts of speech. For the Russian language the basic principles of the syntactic classification of words were outlined in the works of A.M. Peshkovski. In English the syntactico-distributional classification of words was worked out by structuralists L. Bloomfield and his followers Z. Harris and Ch. Fries. The syntactico-distributional classification of words is based on the study of their combinability by means of substitution tests. As a result of this testing, a standard model of four main syntactic positions of notional words was built up. These positions are those of the noun, verb, adjective, and adverb. Pronouns are included into the corresponding positional classes as their substitutes. Words incapable to occupy the said main syntactic positions are treated as functional words.

The noun as a part of speech

The noun as a part of speech has the categorical meaning of “substance. The noun is characrerised by the syntactical function of a subject, object, predicative, adverbial modifier, attribute. Typical of nouns is the prepositional combinability with another noun, with adverb, and adjective. The noun is characterized by the following grammatical categories: gender, number, case and article determination (prof. Blokh).

English nouns are divided into several subclasses.

Prof. Blokh states that the order in which the subclasses are presented is chosen by convention: the given set of subclasses cannot be structured hierarchically.

The category of gender

There are two approaches to the category of gender:

1. There is no grammatical gender in English, as there are no special grammatical forms to express it. This point of view is expressed by Profs. A.I. Smirnitsky, B.A. Ilyish, I.P. Ivanova, and others.

2. Other linguists (Strand, Blokh) recognize the grammatical category of gender in English nouns because it is possible to substitute a noun by a personal pronoun indicating sex.

According to Prof. Blokh, the category of gender is oppositional. It’s formed by two oppositions related to each other on a hierarchical basis:

The scholar proves that the category of gender exists in the English language, but is is purely semantic, as different from the socalled “formal gender” synthetic languages (Russian, German).

There are some nouns in English which are referred to as nouns of common gender – they are capable of expressing both feminine and masculine person genders (person, friend, cousin, doctor, president). There are some nouns which can show the sex lexically: either by means of being combined with certain notional words used as sex indicators or by suffixal derivation: boy friend – girl-friend, he-bear -she-bear, lion-lioness, widower-widow, tom-cat – pussy-cat.

Sometimes we can come across grammatical personifying transposition (олицетворение).

Thus, according to Prof. Blokh, gender can be considered a lexicogrammatical category.

The category of number

The category of number is expressed by the binary privative opposition of the plural form of the noun to the singular form. The strong member of the opposition is the plural; its formal mark is the suffix – (e) s. It correlates with the absence of the suffix in the singular form.

In the cases of oppositional reduction we have Pluralia Tantum and Singularia Tantum nouns. The Pluralia tantum nouns have only plural form.

The Singularia tantum nouns have only singular form. With them the predicate is always in the singular. Sometimes nouns of substance can be used in the plural form or take an indefinite article denoting an object made of the material.

Collective nouns denote groups of human beings (family, government, police); they can be used to denote the group as a whole (singular) ( e.g. His family is friendly) or a group consisting of a certain number of individuals (plural) (e.g.: My family are having dinner now).

The category of case

There exist different views on the category of case.

1. There are two cases in English.

2. There are more than two cases.

3. There are no cases in English at all.

Case is the category of the noun expressing relations between the thing denoted by the noun and other things or properties or actions, and is manifested by some formal sign of the noun itself. The minimum number to form a category is two cases.