Курсовая работа: Comparison of nouns in English and Russian languages
"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 classifiersof 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 certaindifficulties 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]
In some cases usage fluctuates, and the two forms are interchangeable, e. g. brain or brains: he has no brains or little brains; victuals are more common than victual; oats than oat; similarly: His wages were high. How much wages does he get? That is a fair wage. They could not take too much pain.
The dual nature of collective nouns is shown linguistically in various ways: by the number of the verb or by the pronoun referring to it, as for instance, my family are early risers, they are already here.. My family is not large.
It is important to observe that the choice between singular and plural depends on the meaning attached to the noun. Compare also: We have much fruit this year and the rich fruits of the heroic labour of Soviet people are visible from all the corners of the earth.
Similarly: The football team is playing very well. Cf. The football team are having bath and are coming back here for tea.
A word should be said about stylistic transpositions of singular nouns in cases like the following: trees in leaf, to have a keen eye, blue of eye, strong of muscle. Patterns of this kind will exemplify synecdoche — the simplest case of metonymy in grammar ("pars pro toto").
The Germans won the victories. By God they were soldiers. The Old Hun was a soldier. But they were cooked too. They were all cooked... The Hun would come down through the Trentino, and cut the railway at the Vicenza and then where would the Italians be? [6, p.65]
The chap was so big now that he was there nearly all his time, like some immovable, sardonic, humorous eye nothing to decline of men and things. [9, p.84]
Cf. Держи вухо востро. Держи ухо остро. У него наметанный глаз. И слышно было до рассвета, как ликовал француз. [10, p.106]