Дипломная работа: Structural and semantic Characteristics of Nouns

-ness: carelessness, madness, blackness

-ism: socialism, nationalism, imperialism

Unproductive suffixes are:

-hood: childhood, manhood

-dom: freedom

-ship: friendship, relationship

-meat: development

-ance: importance

-ence: dependence

-ty: cruelty

-ity: generosity

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 meanings 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.

2.2.4 Semantical Characteristics of Nouns

Nouns fall under two classes: (A) proper nouns; (B) common nouns[27] .

a) 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 months and of the days of the week (February, Monday), names of ships, hotels, clubs, etc.

A large number of nouns now proper were originally common nouns (Brown, Smith, Mason).

Proper nouns may change their meaning and become common nouns:

"George went over to the table and took a sandwich and a glass of champagne. (Aldington)

b) Common nouns are names that can be applied to any individual of ad ass 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).

Thus there are different groups of common nouns: class nouns, collective nouns, nouns of material and abstract nouns.

1. Class nouns denote persons or things belonging to a class. They are countables and have two. numbers: singular and plural. They are generally used with an article.

"Well, sir," said Mrs. Parker, "I wasn't in the shop above a great deal." (Mansfield)

He goes to the part of the town where the shops are. (Lessing)

2. Collective nouns denote a number or collection of similar individuals or things as a single unit.

Collective nouns fall under the following groups: