Дипломная работа: Structural and semantic Characteristics of Nouns

Nouns representing '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 jobless young people. (Daily Worker).

2. A recipient of some action.

He wanted to employ the axiоims of arithmetic. (Whittaker).

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

He gave M a r упо 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: I arrived at P a r k Lane. (Wilde).

Manner: Everything went off without a hitсh. (Hornby), etc.

6. A property or characteristic of some substance.

The house committee was ready to act. (Daily Worker).

7. A person or thing as an object of comparison.

That monster of a dog.

As we have seen, 'possessive case' nouns occur a great deal less frequently than their opposites[29] .

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[30] .

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).