2. Other linguists (Strand, Blokh) recognize the grammatical category of gender in English nouns because it is possible to substitute a noun by a personal pronoun indicating sex.
According to Prof. Blokh, the category of gender is oppositional. It’s formed by two oppositions related to each other on a hierarchical basis:
The scholar proves that the category of gender exists in the English language, but is is purely semantic, as different from the socalled “formal gender” synthetic languages (Russian, German).
There are some nouns in English which are referred to as nouns of common gender – they are capable of expressing both feminine and masculine person genders (person, friend, cousin, doctor, president). There are some nouns which can show the sex lexically: either by means of being combined with certain notional words used as sex indicators or by suffixal derivation: boy friend – girl-friend, he-bear -she-bear, lion-lioness, widower-widow, tom-cat – pussy-cat.
Sometimes we can come across grammatical personifying transposition (олицетворение).
Thus, according to Prof. Blokh, gender can be considered a lexicogrammatical category.
The category of number
The category of number is expressed by the binary privative opposition of the plural form of the noun to the singular form. The strong member of the opposition is the plural; its formal mark is the suffix – (e) s. It correlates with the absence of the suffix in the singular form.
In the cases of oppositional reduction we have Pluralia Tantum and Singularia Tantum nouns. The Pluralia tantum nouns have only plural form.
The Singularia tantum nouns have only singular form. With them the predicate is always in the singular. Sometimes nouns of substance can be used in the plural form or take an indefinite article denoting an object made of the material.
Collective nouns denote groups of human beings (family, government, police); they can be used to denote the group as a whole (singular) ( e.g. His family is friendly) or a group consisting of a certain number of individuals (plural) (e.g.: My family are having dinner now).
The category of case
There exist different views on the category of case.
1. There are two cases in English.
2. There are more than two cases.
3. There are no cases in English at all.
Case is the category of the noun expressing relations between the thing denoted by the noun and other things or properties or actions, and is manifested by some formal sign of the noun itself. The minimum number to form a category is two cases.
1. Such scholars as J. Nesfield, M. Deutchbein present the so-called theory of positional cases. They state that there are 4 cases expressed not only by – ‘s but by prepositions (of, to) and word order. Nominative, Vocative, Dative and Accusative are distinguished on the basis of the position occupied by the noun in the sentence. These cases are illustrated by the following examples:
1. Nominative case (subject to a verb): rain falls.
2. Vocative (address): Are you coming, my darling?
3. Dative (indirect object to a verb): I gave John a penny.
4. Accusative (direct object and object to a preposition): The cat killed a rat. The ground is covered with snow.
This theory substitutes the functional characteristics of the part of the sentence for the morphological features of the word class (Blokh, 2000).
2. G. Curme presents the second viewpoint- the theory of prepositional cases. According to this theory combinations of nouns with prepositions should be viewed as morphological case forms. He distinguishes
a) the Dative case –to+N, for+N,
b) the Genitive case-of +N.
G. Curme considers these prepositions “inflexional prepositions”-equivalents to case forms. There are some objections to this theory. As any analytical language, English is characterized by extensive use of prepositions, many of which really require definite cases of nouns (prepositional case government). Prepositions render relations analogical to cases of nouns in declensional languages. But in this case all the other prepositional phrases in English must be regarded as “analytical cases”.
3. The third point of view was put forward by H. Sweet, O.Jespersen, Prof. A.I.Smirnitsky, and Prof. L.S.Barkhudarov. It is called “the limited case theory”. It was developed on the base of the oppositional approach. It differentiates two case forms: the possessive, or genitive form as the strong member of the opposition, and the common, or “non-genitive” form as the weak member.
4. There is another viewpoint of the problem of case differentiation in English, held by Russian linguists Prof.Vorontsova, Prof. Ilyish, Prof. Barkhudarov, Prof. Shteling and some others. It states that the English noun has completely lost its category of case in the course of its historical development. The relations thought as the ones rendered by the Genitive case are represented by a noun with a postposition which is similar to the noun with a preposition. This view is called “the theory of the possessive postposition”. To support this theory Prof. Vo-rontsova gives the example of possessive postposition “’s” attached not only to a single word, but to a phrase “ somebody else’s daughter”.
In Prof. Blokh’s opinion the phrasal use of the postpositional -’s has a stylistic colouring. Moreover, statistical data show that the –‘s is attached to individual nouns in 96% of its total use. Secondly, the –‘s has an obvious morphemic property; it is strictly postpositional, unlike the prepositions, and it’s not registered in dictionaries as a separate word.
To sum up, we share the viewpoint that there exists a two case declension of nouns in English. The sign- ‘s has a clear particle nature, it can be added both to individual nouns and nounal groups. Thus two types of Genitive can be differentiated: the word Genitive, and the phrase Genitive.
The category of article determination
The main formal element of the noun category of determination is the article (Blokh, 2000). The article is a determining unit of specific nature accompanying the noun. There are some other determiners in English, such as pronouns: this, any, some, which explicitly interpret the referent of the noun in relation to other objects or phenomena. The article just specifies the referent, defines it in the most general way. The use of the article is obligatory with nouns. There exist two basic approaches to the problem of the article status.
1. The article is a self-sufficient word which forms with the modified noun a syntactic syntagma;
2. The article is the morpheme-like element which builds up with the noun stem a specific morpheme.
The majority of linguists view the article as a unit of language intermediary between the word and the morpheme. The article can be viewed in terms of the oppositional theory. On the higher level the definite article is opposed to the indefinite article and the meaningful absence of article, the definite article being the strong member means identification. On the lower level the weak member of the upper opposition is regarded as an opposition of two types of generalization.
Thus, the system of articles in English is described as one consisting of three articles: the definite article expresses the categorial meaning of identification: the indefinite expresses relative generalization and the zero article expresses absolute generalization.
Adjective as a Part of Speech
The adjective expresses the categorial semantics of property of а substance. It means that each adjective used in the text denotes some characteristics of the noun referent (material, colour, etc.). According to Prof. Blokh, it follows