3. Noun, its grammatical categories

The noun is a part of speech which unites words with the general categorical meaning of substance, or thingness. Nouns are the most numerous class of words. The class of nouns is constituted by the following grammatical categories: Number (singular, plural); Case (common and possessive род падеж); Gender (masculine, feminine, neutral)

Gender of nouns may be defined by 3 ways:

1)system of personal pronouns (he, she, it); 2) special suffixes -er(-or) , -ess (waitress); 3) lexical units which express the idea of gender (niece – nephew; bull – cow)

Common gender. Some nouns which can may both a female or a male person they belong to so call common gender (doctor, president). Animate nouns: he , she. Inanimate nouns - it. The Problem of Gender in English In Indo-European languages the category of gender is presented with flexions. It is not based on sex distinction, but it is grammatical.

Thus, the words husband and wife do not show any difference in their forms due to peculiarities of their lexical meaning. The difference between such nouns as actor and actress is a purely lexical one. In other words, the category of sex should not be confused with the category of gender, because sex is an objective biological category. It correlates with gender only when sex differences of living beings are manifested in the language grammatically (e.g. tiger – tigress, waiter — waitress, widow — widower).

The grammatical category of case in English nouns. Case is a grammatical category which marks the semantic role of the noun in the sentence and finds a grammatical expression in the language. As to Ukrainian nouns they may have 6 or 7 marked singular and plural oppositions in the nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative and vocative case. All the existing theories concerning cases in English can be subdivided into 3 principal groups: 1) the traditional view that there are two cases within English nouns: common or possessive. 2) the number of cases is more than two; 3) English nouns have no morphological category of case. If we are taking about possessive case, this “case” can render various meanings: a) meanings of possession (the brother’s room); b) temporal relations (today’s newspaper). c) quantitative relations (an hour’s walk); d) interpersonal relations (Jane’s friend).

The category of number is represented by the opposition of the singular and the plural (table: tables) Both languages have two numbers: the singular number and the plural number.  In Ukrainian there are the following groups of nouns: a) collective nouns (збірні) –кіннота, людство); b) nouns determining the substance or the mass (які позначають речовину або масу) (мідь, скло); c) abstract nouns (абстрактні) – (знання, здоров’я).

Both in English and in Ukrainian nouns fall into two classes: countable (исчисл) and uncountable. Uncountable nouns are further subdivided into two groups: The group of Singularia Tantum includes: Names of abstract notions (love, friendship); Names of mass materials (bread, sugar); Names of some collective inanimate objects (machinery); Names of sciences and professional activities (medicine, architecture); and Nouns of heterogeneous semantics. This group includes such nouns as: advice, knowledge, money, information, news. The group of Pluralia Tantum nouns includes: Nouns denoting objects consisting of two parts (trousers,); Nouns of multitude (police, poultry) and Nouns of various semantics (oats, clothes).