 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
25
an adverb. E.g.: an entrance to the house; to turn round the corner; red in the face; far from its destination.
The casal (possessive) combinability characterizes the noun alongside its prepositional combinability with
another noun. E.g.: the speech of the President - the President's speech; the cover of the book - the book's
cover.
English nouns can also easily combine with one another by sheer contact, unmediated by any special
lexemic or morphemic means. In the contact group the noun in pre-position plays the role of a semantic
qualifier to the noun in post-position. E.g.: a cannon ball; a log cabin; a sports event; film festivals.
The lexico-grammatical status of such combinations has presented a big problem for many scholars, who
were uncertain as to the linguistic heading under which to treat them: either as one separate word, or a word-
group.* In the history of linguistics the controversy about the lexico-grammatical status of the constructions in
question has received the half-facetious name "The cannon ball problem".
* See: Смирницкий А.И. Лексикология английского языка. М„ 1956, § 133; Жигадло В.Н., Иванова И.П., Иофuк Л.Л., §
255.
Taking into account the results of the comprehensive analysis undertaken in this field up to now, we may
define the combination as a specific word-group with intermediary features. Crucial for this decision is the
isolability test (separation shift of the qualifying noun) which is performed for the contact noun combinations
by an easy, productive type of transformation. Cf:. a cannon ball
> a ball for cannon; the court regulation >
the regulation of the court; progress report
> report about progress; the funds distribution > the distri
bution of
the funds.
The corresponding compound nouns (formed from substantive stems), as a rule, cannot undergo the
isolability test with an equal ease. The transformations with the nounal compounds are in fact reduced to sheer
explanations of their etymological motivation. The comparatively closer connection between the stems in
compound nouns is reflected by the spelling (contact or hyphenated presentation). E.g.: fireplace
> place
where fire is made; starlight
> light coming from stars; story
-teller
> teller (writer, composer) of stories;
theatre-goer
> a person who goes to (frequents) theatres.
Contact noun attributes forming a string of several words are very characteristic of professional language.
E.g.:
A number of Space Shuttle trajectory optimization problems were simulated in the development of the
algorithm, including three ascent problems and a re-entry problem (From a scientific paper on spacecraft). The
accuracy of offshore tanker unloading operations is becoming more important as the cost of petroleum products
increases (From a scientific paper on control systems).
§ 3. As a part of speech, the noun is also characterized by a set of formal features determining its specific
status in the lexical paradigm of nomination. It has its word-building distinctions, including typical suffixes,
compound stem models, conversion patterns. It discriminates the grammatical categories of gender, number,
case, article determination, which will be analysed below.
The cited formal features taken together are relevant for the division of nouns into several subclasses, which
are identified by means of explicit classificational criteria. The most general and rigorously delimited
subclasses of nouns are grouped into four opposi-tional pairs.
The first nounal subclass opposition differentiates proper and common nouns. The foundation of this
division is "type of nomination". The second subclass opposition differentiates animate and inanimate nouns on
the basis of "form of existence". The third subclass opposition differentiates human and non-human nouns on
the basis of "personal quality". The fourth subclass opposition differentiates countable and uncountable nouns
on the basis of "quantitative structure".
Somewhat less explicitly and rigorously distinguished is the division of English nouns into concrete and
abstract.
The order in which the subclasses are presented is chosen by convention, not by categorially relevant
features: each subclass correlation is reflected in the whole of the noun system; this means that the given set of
eight subclasses cannot be structured hierarchically in any linguistically consistent sense (some sort of
hierarchical relations can be observed only between animate - inanimate and human - non-human groupings).
Consider the following examples:
There were three Marys in our company. The cattle have been driven out into the pastures.
The noun Mary used in the first of the above sentences is at one and the same time "proper" (first subclass
division), "animate" (second subclass division), "human" (third subclass division), "countable" (fourth