Noun Grammemes in Speech

§ 87. An English noun lexeme may contain four words at most (boy, boys, boy's, boys'). Each of these words, as we know (§ 19), represents not only the lexeme, but a certain grammeme as well. The grammeme represented by the word boy, for instance, includes all the English words having the

'А. И. Смирницкий, op. cit, § 60. 3 Хаймович и др.

two actual grammatical meanings of 'common case' and 'singular number' (girl, teacher, mile, etc.). The word look does not belong to this grammeme because it has only one actual grammatical meaning, that of 'singular number'. The meaning of 'common case' is only potential or oblique. So book represents another noun grammeme. The word Eng­land represents a different grammeme with the actual gram­matical meaning of 'common case' (cf. England's) and the oblique grammatical meaning of 'singular number'.

If we assume that each grammatical meaning can be actual and oblique, there are four grammatical meanings of 'number', and they can be combined with four 'case' meanings each, to constitute 16 grarnmemes. In reality, however, the 'possessive case' meaning cannot be oblique in English, i. e there are no words with the form and combmability of a 'possessive case' member of a case opposeme that have no 'common case' opposites. Nouns like St. Paul's, the baker's, denoting places, have certainly no opposites with the same lexical meaning and the 'common case' form, but their distribution resembles rather the distribution of 'common case' nouns (cf. at the baker's, from the baker's and at the shop, from the shop]. If, however, we regard them as constituting a separate grammeme with the oblique meanings of 'singular number' and 'possessive case', we may speak of 13 noun grarnmemes in English. In the following table they are represented by one word each.

§ 88. The frequency of the occurrence of different grarn-rnemes in speech ' is different. We have analysed several

¹ It goes ,vvithout saying that when speaking about grammemes in speech we mean words representing these grammemes,

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texts containing a total of 6,000 nouns and counted the occur­rence of each grammeme. In the table below we give the re­sults.

 

Grammemes	"5	Grammemes	"o
No.	representatives	||g	No.	representatives	°" 3 L, <U 0 <u
		&• o-5			ESS
	book, fact	38.4		cattle, police	0.5
	boy, day			England's, earth's	0.3
	milk, information			tongs, dregs	0.2
	books, facts			boys', days'	0.2
	boys, days	6.1		cattle's, police's	0.1
	England, earth	1.7		St. Paul's, bak-	0.1
	boy's, day's	1.4		er's

§ 89. When analysing an opposemeof any category, we re­gard the grammatical meanings of its members as elementary, indivisible and unchangeable, determined only by the con-irast with the opposite meanings. But in speech words 'are contrasted with other words not paradigmatically, in opposemes, but syntagmatically, in word-combinations. Depending on these combinations, grammatical meanings may -vary considerably.

We must also take into consideration that single grammat­ical meanings may occur in speech only in case a word has but one such meaning. Otherwise a.11 the grammatical mean­ings of a word go in a bunch (§ 21) characteristic of the grammeme to which the word belongs. So if we want to see the different shades a given grammatical meaning may acquire in speech, we are to analyse in a text the words of different grammemes containing that meaning. If, for instance, the variation of the 'singular' meaning is to be investigated we are to study the grammemes represented by the words boy, boy's, England, England's, book milk, St. Paul's. We shall call them 'singular' grammemes for short.

§ 90. The representatives of 'singular' grammemes consti­tute the bulH of nouns found in an English text (more than

3' 07

70 per cent of the total number). Following is a brief summary of what a 'singular' noun may denote in speech.

1. One object. The plane struck a seagull. (Daily
Worker).

2. A unique object. Shakespeare's name will
live forever. (Ib.).

3. A whole class ol objects. The English gen.tleman
is dead. (Walpole). „

In this sense 'singularity' gets very close to 'plurality'. So close indeed, that sometimes 'singular' and 'plural' nouns are actually interchangeable.

Cf The polar bear lives in the North. Polar bears live in the North.

Here as elbewhere extremes meet.

4. A 'singular' collective noun stands for a group of
beings or things viewed as an integrated whole, e. g. peasantry,
humanity, mankind.

5. A 'singular' abstract or material noun may show some
abstract concept or substance which is not associated with
any idea of singularity.

/ have accepted with tolerance the establislied conven­tions of syntax. (Vailins).

§91. Nouns representing 'plural' grammemes may denote:

1. Two or more homogeneous objects.

Molly was very proud to be able to decide such q*u e s -t i о п s. (Steinbeck).

2. A whole class of objects.

The Hindus and the Muslims liked and trusted him. (Maugham).

Foreigners on the whole were very dangerous people. (I b).

3. A number of objects similar, though not identical (the
plural of approximation).

A woman in her late thirties.

4. Individual objects.

His trousers looked shabby.

5. A mass of some substance.

A lion does not live on leavings. (Maxwell).

6, Boundless extension or repetition. The^isage is aimed al producing a stylistic effect.

The s n о w s of the Polar Region. The waters of the Danube.

§92. Nouns represent ing 'common case' grammemes express a wide range of meanings, the exhaustive examination of which is hardly feasible. Here are some of them.

1. A doer of an action or the carrier of some property.

The young worker challenged the Prime Minister to go and meet Britain's ^obless young people. (Daily Worker).

2. A recipient of some action.

He wanted to employ the a x i о т s of arithmetic. (Whitta-ker).

3. The person (or thing) for whom something is done.

He gave M a r у no time to change her mind. (Daily Work­er).

4. An instrument. When so used, the 'common case*
noun is mostly associated with a preposition,

e. g. to cut with a knife.

5. Circumstances of different events. When so used, the
'common case' noun is mostly introduced by a preposition.

Time: Every Saturday night she bought a joint of meat. (Coppard).

Place: / arrived at P a r k Lane. (\'ilde).

Manner: Everything went off without a h i t с h. (Hornby), etc.

6. A property or characteristic of some substance.

The house committee was ready to act. (Daily Worker). 1. A person or thing as an object of comparison. That monster of a dog.

§ 93. As we have seen, 'possessive case' nouns occur a great deal less frequently than their opposites *.

¹ Some linguists regard the possessive case as a disappearing case (see, for instance, M. Bryant. A Functional English Grammar. Boston,

The range of meaning of the possessive case is incomparably narrower than that of the common case. Yet linguists point out a number of meanings a 'possessive case' noun may express in speech ^д.

a) possession, belonging (Peter's bicycle)

b) personal or social relations (Peter's wife)

c) authorship (Peter's poem)

d) origin or source (the sun's rays)

e) kind or species (ladies' hats)

f) the relation of the whole to its part (Peter's
hand)

g) subjective relations (Peter's arrival)
h) objective relations (Peter's being sent)

i) characteristic (her mother's care) (rather rare) j) measure (a night's reflection; a mile's distance).

§ 94. Sometimes the relations of a 'possessive case' noun are ambiguous. The relation in her daughter's loss may be interpreted either as subjective or as objective. This can be accounted for by the fact that her daughter's loss may be regarded as a transformation (or a transform) of two differ­ent sentences.

Her daughtei lost ... Her daughter was lost

her daughter's loss

In other words, having no voice distinctions, the noun loss may correspond to both the active and the passive voice of the verb.

§ 95. Since both 'possessive case' and 'common case' nouns may have right-hand connections with other nouns, it is interesting to see the difference between the two combina­tions in speech. This is what W. N. Francis writes on the subject ²: "Nouns make up a considerable number (as many as 25 per sent) of the single-word modifiers of nouns ...

1945, p. 36) Others (Ch. Barber. Linguistic change in Present-Day English Edinburgh, 1964, p. 132) speak of "the spreading of the 's-genitive at the expense of the ^/-genitive".

¹ See Г. H. Воронцова, op. cit., p. 40.

² The Structure of American English. New York, 1958.

Possessive

child's play a dog's life a day's work my father's house that woman's doctor

Noun-adjunct

child psychology the dog days' the day shift a father image that woman doctor

The last pair illustrates vividly the difference in meaning there may be between these two structures of modification. The formal difference between them may be described as follows: a construction with of may be substituted for the possessive construction, and the determiner * (if there is one) will then go with the modifying noun; on the other hand, some other kind of construction must be substituted for the noun-adjunct, and the determiner goes with the head noun. In the following illustrations the symbol > means -"trans­forms into".

but but

My father's house > that father image > that woman's doctor > that woman doctor >

house of my father

that image like (a) father

doctor of that woman

that doctor who is a woman".

§ 96. As we see, the relations expressed by a 'possessive case' noun can usually be rendered by its 'common case' opposite preceded by of (the so-called 'o/-phrase'). The 'pos­sessive case' noun and the corresponding o/-phrase are syn­onymous, but to a certain extent only.

Unlike the possessive case, the o/-phrase is freely used with all nouns irrespective of their lexical meanings. Its range of meaning is much wider than that of the possessive case. Thus, besides the 'possessive case' relations already mentioned it may show the relations of appraisal (a man of strong will), of material (a table of oak), of composition (a group of children), etc.

The of-phrase is believed to sound more formal than the possessive case. In formal style it is more common than the possessive.

E. g. Head of a girl (in a picture or sculpture exhibition programme), not a girl's Iwad.

¹ Article, possessive or demonstrative pronoun, etc. attached to the noun.

§ 97. In the Russian language a noun in the genitive case may be adnominal and adverbial, i. e. it can be attached to a noun and to a verb.

E. g. дом отца, боюсь грозы.

The possessive case is practically adnominal, as in Tom's departure.

In sentences like The idea is George's, where George's is not followed by a noun, it is sometimes called the'independ­ent possessive'. But in reality it is not independent, as it refers to some noun, usually mentioned previously (the word idea in the sentence above). Therefore such possessives are called 'anaphorical'. But this term would be misapplied in cases like George's was a brilliant idea, where the noun idea follows the possessive.

Seeing that there is exact parallelism with the use of the so-called absolute possessive pronouns (The idea is mine. Mine was a brilliant idea), we shall call such possessives absolute.

§ 98. In Modern English there exists a peculiar construc­tion which is a combination of the possessive case and the o/-phrase. The construction makes it possible to place an article, a demonstrative pronoun, etc. before the modified noun. Cf. John's friend and a (the, tliat) friend of John's. The possessive case in the construction is absolute. Cf. a (the, that) friend of yours.

The construction usually has a partitive meaning. A friend of Mary's = one of Mary's friends. It may also be used for stylistic purposes mostly with ironic colouring. That long nose of John's.

§ 99. In cases like / dined at my aunt's or a garden party at Brown's the possessive case is really independent. It does not refer to any other noun, and does not correspond to an abso­lute possessive pronoun. The meaning of the independent possessive is that of locality. It denotes the house, shop, cathedral, place of business, etc. of the person denoted by the noun. E. g. the baker's, draper's, watchmaker's, etc., also St. Paul's (see § 87).

§ 101. Let us compare the English noun with its Rir«ian ro'interpart. The five properties we use as criteria for distin­guishing parts of speech will serve as the basis of comparison.

П

1. The lexico-grammatical meanings are similar.

2. The variety of lexico-grammatical morphemes is much
greater in the Russian noun. A peculiarity of Russian is the
abundance of suffixes of "subjective appraisal"» as in братец,
билетик, петушок, карманчик, частица, ножка, пылинка,
хохотушка, звездочка, дедушка, шалунишка, доченька,
платьице, старикашка, дурачина, голосище, etc. (CL-let,
in booklet, streamlet, etc.). „

3. In both languages we find the categories of number and
case. But their opposemes, especially those of the category of
case, differ greatly in the two languages.

 

a) A Russian tase opposeme contains six members as
against the English two-member case opposeme.

b) In English the "singular number, common case" gram-
meme is as a rule not marked. In Russian any grammeme
can be marked.

E. g. рука, окно, etc.

c) The productive positive number and case morphemes are
standard in English (-(e)sand -'s) and non-standard in Russian
(столы, стулья, книги, столов, стульев, книг, etc.).

d) Number and case are sometimes expressed by separate
morphemes in English (e. g. oxen's), while in Russian they
are inseparable.

e) The case morpheme -'s has a certain freedom of distri­
bution, not observed in any case morpheme of the Russian
language.

f) Though in both languages the meaning of case is "the
relation of nouns to other words in speech", the meaning of the
possessive case is in the main narrowed to "the relation to other
nouns" only, which distinguishes this case from the other
cases of both Russian and English.

g) Owing to the narrowness of the "possessive case", the
only other case, the "common case", is exceptionally wide.
In fact, the extent of its meaning almost equals that of all
the six cases of Russian nouns. Hence the necessity of speci­
fication by prepositions and, consequently, the enormous im­
portance of prepositions as a characteristic feature of English.

h) One of the prepositional phrases, the o/-phrase can practically replace the possessive case. The difference between them is mostly stylistic. There is nothing similar in Russian.

4. Russian nouns fall into three gender subclasses, which
is alien to English.

5. In both languages nouns can be divided into countables and uncountables, the latter — into singularia tantum and pluralia tantum. In both languages uncountables have oblique 'number' meanings through the analogy in form and combi- nability with countables. But in the Russian language there is nearly always correlation between form and combinability (сани едут, часы стали, семья ждет, комитет заседает) which is not the case in English (the cattle are, physics is, the family is of are). 6. The number of Russian nouns having no case opposites is small. They are comparatively recent borrowings like пальто, депо, такси, кенгуру, etc. In English the majority of nouns have no case opposites. 7. Below are some of the connections of English and Rus­ sian nouns compared.

 

Left-hand con­nections with	Russian nouns	English nouns
Prepositions	1) Not the nomina-	The common case
	tive case	with any prepo-
		sition
	2) Different cases
	with different
Adjectives Numerals	prepositions Grammatical com­binability	Mo grammatical combinability
a) cardinal	Mostly the genitive	both cases
	case
b) ordinal Verbs	Grammatical com­binability	No grammatical combinability
a) notional	1) any case 2) different cases with different	the common case with any verb
	verbs
b) linking	mostly the instru-	mostly the com-
	mental case,	mon case
	sometimes the
	nominative or the
	genitive case

Продолжение

 

Left-hand con­nections with	Russian nouns	English nouns
Nouns Articles	mostly the genitive case	the common case both cases (a not before plurals)
Right-hand con­nections with	Russian nouns	English nouns
Prepositions Verbs Nouns	any case any case, but mostly nomina­tive any case	the common case usually the com­mon case both cases

8. In both languages the functions of different case gram-memes are different. In Russian only a nominative case gram-meme can be the subject, only an accusative case grammeme can be a direct object, only a nominative or an instrumental case grammeme is used as a predicative.

In English possessive case grammemes are used almost exclusively as attributes. Common case grammemes fulfil the functions of almost any part of the sentence.