Курсовая работа: Comparison of nouns in English and Russian languages

the children's education → the education of the children

It is to be noted that in many cases the special meaning of the genitive depends on the intrinsic meaning of each of the two words connected, and is therefore in each case readily understood by the hearer. The of-phrase denoting possession is generally preferred when the noun is modified by a lengthy attributive adjunct attached to it.

The 's-form is rarely used as the objective genitive. The of-phrase in this function is fairly common, e. g.: the sense of beauty, the sense of smell, love of life, the reading of books, the feeling of safety, a lover of poetry, etc.

The, of-phrase in Modern English is widely current in various types of structures, denoting:

a)the idea of quantity or part ("partitive genitive"), e. g.: a piece of bread, a lump of sugar, a cake of soap, etc.;

b)material of which a thing is done, e. g.: a dress of silk;

c) position in space or direction, e. g.: south of Moscow, within 10 miles of London;

d)relations of time, e. g.: of an evening, of late, all of a sudden;

e) attributive relations, e. g.: the language of a child =a child's language, the voice of a woman =a woman's voice, etc.;

f) composition or measure, e. g.: a group of children, a herd of cattle, a flock of birds, a swarm of bees, etc.

There are also patterns with the of-phrase functioning as the appositive genitive, e. g.: the city of Rome, the Republic of France, etc.

Alongside with this appositive construction there is another. The appositive may be placed after the governing noun, e. g.: Lake Michigan, the River Thames, etc.

Cases are something that is probably the most complicated concept of the Russian language to the student that speaks only English. Old English had cases, but in contemporary English language you can notice cases and declension mostly in personal pronouns. In English you can see the changes in personal pronoun 'I', that is changed to 'me', 'my' or 'mine' according to its role in the sentence.

Cases are exactly that. When a noun has a different role in a sentence, that role is indicated by a change in the noun. In Russian language there are six cases: Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, Dative, Locative and Instrumental. The case system in Russian does two things. First, it marks the grammatical functions of nouns which are indicated by word order in English, that is, the subject, object and indirect object of the sentence. (This means that these nouns are free to be ordered almost anywhere in the sentence since their function is clearly indicated by their form.) Second, cases mark certain adverbial functions such as the time, manner, and means of carrying our an action, which are marked by prepositions in English, e.g. by hand, on Friday, with enthusiasm This function leads to the case system being associated with prepositions. Remember: in Russian all prepositions are associated with a case which is attached to their objects. Since only nouns can express case, this means that only nouns may be objects of prepositions. [24]

Every noun in Russian must be selected for one of six categories when they are used in a sentence. To indicate which category has been selected by the speaker, the endings of the noun are changed. This means that each (declinable) noun has up to six different forms, differing only in the final letter or two on the end.

2.3 The functions of Nouns in English and in Russian languages

The noun has certain syntactical characteristics.

The chief syntactical functions of the noun in the sentence are those of the subject and the object. But it might be used as an attribute or a predicative.

The sun was rising in all his splendid beauty. [2, p.32] (subject)

Troy and Yates followed the tourists. [5, p.59] (object)

He (Bosinney) was an architect… [3, p.83] (predicative)

Mary brought in the fruit on a tray and with it a glass bowl, and a blue dish… [5, p.78] (attribute; the noun glass is used in the common case)

The hero and heroine, of course, just arrived from his father’s yacht. [5, p.104] (attribute; the noun father is used in the genitive case)

A noun preceded by a preposition (a prepositional phrase) may be used as attribute, prepositional indirect object, and adverbial modifier.

To the left were clean panes of glass. [1, p.50] (attribute)

Bicket did not answer, his throat felt too dry. He had heard of the police. [3, p.96] (object)

She went into the drawing-room and lighted the fire. [2, p.254] (adverbial modifier)

"Stop everything, Laura!" cried Jose in astonishment.[2, p.261] (adverbial modifier)

The noun is generally associated with the article. Because of the comparative scarcity of morphological distinctions in English in some cases only articles show that the word is noun.