Курсовая работа: Comparison of nouns in English and Russian languages
Курсовая работа: Comparison of nouns in English and Russian languages
Content
Introduction
Chapter I Morphological features of nouns
1.1 Classification of nouns in English
1.2 Morphological characteristics of Nouns
1.3 Morphological composition of Nouns
Chapter II Comparison of Nouns in
English and Russian languages
2.1 The category of number of Nouns in English and in
Russian languages
2.2 The category of case of Nouns in English and in
Russian language
2.3 The functions of Nouns in English and in Russian
languages
Conclusion
Bibliography
Appendix
Introduction
Topicality
Language is a social phenomenon and
every language has its own grammar. For many centuries such famous scholars as
B. Illyish, M. Y. Blokh, O. Jesperson and many others had investigated the
problem of parts of speech, that causes great controversies both in general
linguistic theory and in the analysis of separate languages. And the main
question that had interested them was noun as a part of speech.
The word
"noun" comes from the Latin nomen meaning "name."
Word classes like nouns were first described by Sanskrit grammarian Panini and
ancient Greeks like Dionysios Thrax, and defined in terms of
their morphological properties. For example, in Ancient Greek, nouns can be
inflected for grammatical
case, such as dative or accusative. Verbs, on the other hand,
can be inflected for tenses, such as past, present or future, while nouns
cannot. [14, 31]
In traditional
school grammars, one often encounters the definition of nouns that they are all
and only those expressions that refer to a person, place, thing, event,
substance, quality, or idea, etc. This is a semantic definition. It has been
criticized by contemporary linguists as being quite uninformative. Part of the
problem is that the definition makes use of relatively general nouns
("thing," "phenomenon," "event") to define what
nouns are. The existence of such general nouns shows us that nouns are
organized in taxonomic
hierarchies.[10,
67]
In the
prevailing Modern English terminology the terms "noun" and "substantive"
are used as synonyms. According to an earlier view, the term "noun"
was understood to cover all nominal parts of speech, including substantives,
adjectives, pronouns, and numerals, thus corresponding to the Russian term имя.
According to the existence of differences
and similarities in English and in Russian we had revealed in our course paper
the morphological features of nouns, it’s classification and had done the
comparison between English and Russian languages, which are important for
Modern English.
The theme of our course paper is "Comparison
of nouns in English and Russian languages".
The aim of investigation is to give more
understandable and interesting information about the nouns in English and
Russian languages and to find out similarities and differences between them.
Object: the category of case and number
of nouns in English and Russian
Subject: the grammar of English and
Russian languages
The objectives of investigation are
follows:
1.
To gather as much materials out of
different sources (scientific books, curriculum guidelines, teachers' magazines,
etc.) as it is required.
2.
To
study and analyze the work of different linguists;
3.
To reveal the importance of the nouns in
English grammar.
4.
To investigate similarities and
differences in English and Russian languages.
5.
Using more examples to compare nouns in
English and Russian languages.
Hypothesis: we suppose that nouns are
important and if we want to achieve the proficiency we should take into account
that noun have their own morphological and
semantically features. Teachers will use them in their teaching process.
Practical value: by comparing the nouns in English and Russian languages
we want to give more examples which show similarities and differences of nouns
in English and Russian languages.
Theoretical value: the final outcome of
our investigation can be developed in scientific and diploma work. And they can
be used as a source of preparing lectures for Theoretical grammar.
Methods of investigation:
1.
contrastive method
2.
descriptive
method
3.
analytical
method
The scientific
novelty is: we had found out differences and similarities in case system and
grammatical category of number of nouns in English and Russian languages.
English distinguishes two numbers: singular and plural as Russian. Case system
of Russian language is more developed than in English.
The bases of our work are resource
center and libraries.
The structure of our course paper: Introduction,
Topicality, the theoretical part, the practical part, Conclusion, Bibliography
and Appendix.
The theoretical
part includes:
Classification of nouns in
English
Morphological
characteristics of Nouns
Morphological
composition of Nouns
The practical
part includes:
The category
of number of Nouns in English and in Russian languages
The category
of case of Nouns in English and in Russian languages
The functions
of Nouns in English and in Russian languages
Chapter I Morphological features of nouns
1.1 Classification of nouns in
English
Proper nouns and common nouns
Proper nouns (also called proper names)
are the names of unique entities. For example, "Janet",
"Jupiter" and "Germany" are proper nouns. Proper nouns are
usually capitalized
in English and most other languages that use the Latin alphabet, and this is one
easy way to recognize them. However, in German nouns of all types are
capitalized. The convention of capitalizing all nouns was previously used in
English, but has long fallen into disuse.
All other nouns are called common nouns.
For example, "girl", "planet", and "country" are
common nouns.
Sometimes the same word can function as
both a common noun and a proper noun, where one such entity is special. For
example: "There can be many gods, but there is only one God."
This is somewhat magnified in Hebrew
where EL means god (as in a god), God (as in the God), and El (the name of a
particular Canaanite
god).
The common meaning of the word or words
constituting a proper noun may be unrelated to the object to which the proper
noun refers. For example, someone might be named "Tiger Smith"
despite being neither a tiger nor a smith.
For this reason, proper nouns are usually not translated between languages,
although they may be transliterated. For example, the German
surname Knödel becomes Knodel or Knoedel in English (not the literal
Dumpling). However, the translation of place names and the names of monarchs, popes, and
non-contemporary authors is common and sometimes universal. For instance, the Portuguese
word Lisboa becomes Lisbon in English;
the English London becomes Londres in French; and the Greek Aristotelēs
becomes Aristotle
in English.
Countable nouns
and uncountable nouns
Countable nouns
(or count nouns) are common nouns that can take a plural, can combine with
numerals or quantifiers (e.g. "one", "two",
"several", "every", "most"), and can take an
indefinite article ("a" or "an"). Examples of countable
nouns are "chair", "nose", and "occasion". Uncountable
nouns (or mass nouns) differ from countable nouns in precisely that respect:
they can't take plural or combine with number words or quantifiers. Examples
from English include "laughter", "cutlery",
"helium", and "furniture". For example, it is not possible
to refer to "a furniture" or "three furnitures". This is
true, even though the furniture referred to could, in principle, be counted.
Thus the distinction between mass and count nouns shouldn't be made in terms of
what sorts of things the nouns refer to, but rather in terms of how the nouns present
these entities. The separate page for mass noun contains further explanation of
this point. Some words function in the singular as a count noun and, without a
change in the spelling, as a mass noun in the plural: she caught a fish, we
caught fish; he shot a deer, they shot some deer; the craft was dilapidated,
the pier was chockablock with craft.
Collective Nouns
Collective nouns are nouns that refer to
groups consisting of more than one individual or entity, even when they are
inflected for the singular. Examples include "committee,"
"herd" and "school" (of herring). These nouns have slightly
different grammatical properties than other nouns. For example, the noun phrases
that they head can serve of the subject of a collective predicate, even when
they are inflected for the singular. A collective predicate is a predicate that
normally can't take a singular subject. An example of the latter is
"surround the house."
Good: The boys surrounded the house.
Bad: *The boy surrounded the house.
Good: The committee surrounded the
house. [11.p.62]
Concrete nouns
and abstract nouns
Concrete nouns refer to definite
objects—objects in which you use at least one of your senses.
For instance, "chair", "apple", or "Janet".
Abstract nouns on the other hand refer to ideas or concepts, such as
"justice" or "hate". While this distinction is sometimes
useful, the boundary between the two of them is not always clear. In English,
many abstract nouns are formed by adding noun-forming suffixes
("-ness", "-ity", "-tion") to adjectives or
verbs. Examples are "happiness", "circulation" and
"serenity".
1.2 Morphological
characteristics of the Nouns
The noun has
the following morphological characteristics:
1.
Nouns
that can be counted have two numbers: singular and plural (e.g. singular: a
girl, plural: girls).
2.
Nouns
denoting living being (and some nouns denoting lifeless things) have two case
forms: the common case and the genitive case.
It is doubtful
whether grammatical category of gender exists in Modern English for it is hardly
ever expressed by means of grammatical forms.
There is
practically only one gender-forming suffix in Modern English, the suffix -es,
expressing feminine gender. It is not widely used.
heir- heir-ess
poet- poet-ess
actor-
actor-ess
waiter-
waitr-ess
host- host-ess
lion- lion-ess
tiger-
tigr-ess
Gender, i.e.
the distinction of nouns into masculine, feminine and neuter, may be expressed
lexically by means of different words or word-compounds:
father- mother
man- woman
boy- girl gentleman-
lady
husband- wife cock-sparrow-
hen-sparrow
boy-friend- girl-friend man-servant-
maid-servant
"She is
heiress to the throne." [4, p.110]
"Is there
a parson, much bemused in beer,
A maudlin
poetess, a rhyming peer,
A clerk,
foredoomed his father’s soul to cross,
Who pen’s a
stanza, when he should engross?" [2, p.385]
"A living
cat is better than a dead lioness". [2, p.230]
"Saint
George, that swinged the dragon, and e’er since
Sits on his
horse back at mine hostess’ door." [5, p.447]
In linguistics, grammatical number is a
morphological category characterized by the expression of quantity through
inflection or agreement. As an example, consider the English sentences below:
That apple on the table is fresh.
Those two apples on the table are fresh.
The number of apples is marked on the
noun — "apple", singular number (one item) vs. "apples",
plural number (more than one item) —, on the demonstrative,
"that/those", and on the verb, "is/are". Note that, especially
in the second sentence, this information can be considered redundant,
since quantity is already indicated by the numeral "two".
A language has grammatical number when
its nouns are subdivided into morphological classes according to the quantity
they express, such that:
Every noun belongs
to a single number class. (Number partitions nouns into disjoint classes.)
Noun modifiers (such as adjectives) and verbs have
different forms for each number class, and must be inflected to match the
number of the nouns they refer to. (Number is an agreement
category.)
This is the case in English: every noun
is either singular or plural (a few, such as "fish", can be either,
according to context), and at least some modifiers of nouns — namely the demonstratives,
the personal pronouns, the articles, and verbs — are
inflected to agree with the number of the nouns they refer to: "this
car" and "these cars" are correct, while "this cars"
or "these car" are ungrammatical.
Not all languages have number as a
grammatical category. In those that do not, quantity must be expressed directly,
with numerals, or indirectly, through optional quantifiers.
However, many of these languages compensate for the lack of grammatical number
with an extensive system of measure words.[23]
The word "number" is also used
in linguistics to describe the distinction between certain grammatical aspects
that indicate the number of times an event occurs, such as the semelfactive
aspect, the iterative aspect, etc.
1.3
Morphological composition of nouns
According to
their morphological composition we distinguish simple, derivative and compound
nouns.
1.
Simple
nouns are nouns which have neither prefixes nor suffixes. They are indecomposable:
chair, table, room, map, fish, work.
2.
Derivative nouns are nouns which have derivative
elements (prefixes or suffixes or both): reader, sailor, blackness, childhood,
misconduct, inexperience.
Productive
noun-forming suffixes are:
-er: reader,
teacher, worker
-ist:
communist, telegraphist, dramatist
-ess: heiress,
hostess, actress
-ness:
careless, madness, blackness
-ism:
socialism, nationalism, imperialism
"Reader,
though I look comfortably accommodated, I am not very tranquil in my mind…"
"I
suppose, thought I, judging from the plainness of the servant and carriage,
Mrs. Fairfax is not a very dashing person: so much the better; I never lived
amongst fine people but once, and I was very miserable with them."
"Is there
a place in this neighbourhood called Thornfield?"
"... just
as I cherished towards Mrs. Fairfax a thankfulness for her kindness, ..." [1,
pp.94-109]
Unproductive
suffixes are:
-hood:
childhood, manhood
-dom: freedom
-ship:
friendship, relationship
-ment:
development
-ance:
importance
-ence:
dependence
-ty: cruelty
-ity: generosity
"She had
finished her breakfast, so I permitted her to give a specimen of her
accomplishments."
"She made
reasonable progress, entertained for me a vivacious, though perhaps not very profound
affection, and by her simplicity, gay prattle, efforts to please, inspired me,
in return, with a degree of attachment sufficient to make us both content in
each other’s society." [1, pp.109-110]
"The
little Princess had never seen a firework in her life, so the King had given
orders that the Royal Pyrotechnist should be in attendance on the day of her
marriage." [7, p.10]
3. Compound
nouns are nouns built from two or more stems. Compound nouns often have one
stress. The meaning of a compound often differs from the meaning of its
elements.
The main types
of compound nouns are as follows:
(a)
noun-stem+
noun-stem: appletree, snowball;
(b)
adjective-stem+
noun-stem: blackbird, bluebell;
(c) verb-stem+
noun-stem: pickpocket; the stem of a gerund or of a participle may be the first
component of a compound noun: dining-room, reading-hall, dancing-girl.
"I
followed still, up a very narrow staircase to the attics, and thence by a
ladder and through a trap-door to the roof of the hall." [1, p.105]
"The last
item on the programme was a grand display of fireworks, to be let off exactly
at midnight." [7, p.15]
Conclusion
In theoretical
part of our course work we investigated two main questions: classification of
nouns in English and morphological characteristics of nouns.
We had found
that nouns are classified into: (A) proper nouns; (B) common nouns. There are different groups
of common nouns: class nouns, collective nouns, nouns of material and abstract
nouns. Proper nouns are individual names given to separate persons or things.
As regards their meaning proper nouns may be personal names (Mary, Peter,
Shakespeare), geographical names (Moscow, London, the Caucasus), the names of
the month and days of week (February, Monday), etc. Common nouns are names that
can be applied to any individual of a class of persons or things (e. g. man,
dog, book), collections of similar individuals or things regarded as a single
unit (e. g. peasantry, family), materials (e. g. snow, iron, cotton) or
abstract notions (e. g. kindness, development).
According to
their morphological composition nouns may be: simple, derivative and compound.
The noun has such morphological characteristics as: number (singular and
plural), case (the common case and the genitive case). The category of gender is expressed
in English by the obligatory correlation of nouns with the personal pronouns of
the third person. These serve as specific gender classifiers of nouns, being potentially reflected
on each entry of the noun in speech.
Chapter II Comparison of Nouns in
English and Russian languages
2.1 The
category of number of Nouns in English and in Russian languages
The noun in
Modern English has only two grammatical categories, number and case. The existence
of case appears to be doubtful and has to be carefully analysed.
The Modern
English noun certainly has not got the category of grammatical gender, which is
to be found, for example, in Russian, French, German and Latin. Not a single
noun in Modern English shows any peculiarities in its morphology due to its
denoting a male or a female being. Thus, the words husband and wife do not show
any difference in their forms due to the peculiarities of their lexical
meanings. [10,p. 69]
NUMBER
Modern English
like most other languages distinguishes two numbers: singular and plural. The
meaning of singular and plural seems to be self-explanatory, that is the
opposition: one —
more than
one. With all this, expression of number in different classes of English nouns
presents certain difficulties
for a foreigner to master.
As already
mentioned, plural and singular nouns stand in contrast as diametrically
opposite. Instances are not few, however, when their opposition comes to be
neutralised. And this is to say that there are cases when the numeric
differentiation appears to be of no importance at all. Here belong many
collective abstract and material nouns. If, for instance, we look at the
meaning of collective nouns, we cannot fail to see that they denote at the same
time a plurality and a unit. They may be said to be doubly countable and thus
from a logical point of view form the exact contrast to mass nouns: they are,
in fact, at the same time singular and plural, while mass words are logically
neither. The double-sidedness of collective nouns weakens the opposition and
leads to the development of either Pluralia tantum, as in: weeds (in a garden),
ashes, embers, etc., or Singularia tantum, as in: wildfowl, clergy, foliage,
etc. [1, p.87]
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