1. b

2. c

3. a

4. b

5. b

6. d

7. d

8. a

9. d

10. b

2.4 Comparison of English and Russian nouns

Let us compare the English noun with its Russian counterpart See Appendix Table 3.. The five properties we use as criteria for distinguishing parts of speech will serve as the basis of comparison.

1. The lexico-grammatical meanings are similar.

2. The variety of lexico-grammatical morphemes is much greater in the Russian noun. A peculiarity of Russian is the abundance of suffixes of "subjective appraisal", as in братец, билетик, петушок, карманчик, частица, ножка, пылинка, хохотушка, звездочка, дедушка, шалунишка, доченька, платьице, старикашка, дурачина, голосище, etc. (Cf.-let, in booklet, streamlet, etc.).

3. In both languages we find the categories of number and case. But their opposemes, especially those of the category of case, differ greatly in the two languages.

a) A Russian case opposeme contains six members as against the English two-member case opposeme.

b) In English the "singular number, common case" grammeme is as a rule not marked. In Russian any grammeme can be marked.

E. g. рука, окно, etc.

c) The productive positive number and case morphemes are standard in English (-(e)s and -'s) and non-standard in Russian (столы, стулья, книги, столов, стульев, книг, etc.).

d) Number and case are sometimes expressed by separate morphemes in English (e. g. oxen's), while in Russian they are inseparable.

e) The case morpheme -'s has a certain freedom of distribution, not observed in any case morpheme of the Russian language.

f) Though in both languages the meaning of case is "the relation of nouns to other words in. speech", the meaning of the possessive case is in the main narrowed to "the relation to other nouns" only, which distinguishes this case from the other cases of both Russian and English.

g) Owing to the narrowness of the "possessive case", the only other case, the "common case", is exceptionally wide.

In fact, the extent of its meaning almost equals that of all the six cases of Russian nouns. Hence the necessity of specification by prepositions and, consequently, the enormous importance of prepositions as a characteristic feature of English.

h) One of the prepositional phrases, the o/-phrase can practically replace the possessive case. The difference between them is mostly stylistic. There is nothing similar in Russian.

4. Russian nouns fall into three gender subclasses, which is alien to English.

5. In both languages nouns can be divided into countables and uncountables, the latter -- into singularia tantum and pluralia tantum. In both languages uncountables have oblique 'number' meanings through the analogy in form and combinability with countables. But in the Russian language there is nearly always correlation between form and combinability (сани едут, часы стали, семья ждет, комитет заседает) which is not the case in English (the cattle are, physics is, the. family is or are).

6. The number of Russian nouns having no case opposites is small. They are comparatively recent borrowings like пальто, депо, такси, кенгуру, etc. In English the majority of nouns have no case opposites.

7. In both languages the functions of different case grammemes are different. In Russian only a nominative case grammeme can be the subject, only an accusative case grammeme can be a direct object, only a nominative or an instrumental case grammeme is used as a predicative.

In English possessive case grammemes are used almost exclusively as attributes. Common case grammemes fulfil the functions of almost any part of the sentence.

III. Conclusion

In the present paper we attempted to investigate the noun, the main part of speech in English grammar. We chose the noun as the theme of our qualification work because we interested in it. We used different kind of references to investigate the noun. In other words, we mentioned that we studied the main aspects of English nouns: grammatical categories, grammatical characteristics, semantical characteristics, and rule of correct use of English nouns.

The problem of definition of noun comes to be one of the main problems for those who study noun. There is a great number of definitions that define nouns from different points of view. Summarizing all of them we can conclude that noun is a word expressing substance in the widest sense of the word. In the concept of substance we include not only names of living beings (e.g. boy, girl, bird) and lifeless things (e.g. table, chair, book), but also names of abstract notions, i.e. qualities, slates, actions (kindness, strength, sleep, fear, conversation, fight), abstracted from their bearers.

The present work proves that nouns must be treated very accurately because some nouns, in case of changing their grammatical form, can receive another lexical meaning. If you say “I love this people”, one will understand that you love the exact group of people, but if you say “I love these peoples” you might be understood as loving group of nations. This is because the word `people' is Pluralia Tantum, i.e. has not singular form at all, and prefix -s won't bring the meaning of plurality, but the meaning of word `nations'.

Nouns can be classified further as count nouns, which name anything that can be counted (four books, two continents, a few dishes, a dozen buildings); mass nouns (or non-count nouns), which name something that can't be counted (water, air, energy, blood); and collective nouns, which can take a singular form but are composed of more than one individual person or items (jury, team, class, committee, herd). We should note that some words can be either a count noun or a non-count noun depending on how they're being used in a sentence. Whether or not a noun is uncountable is determined by its meaning: an uncountable noun represents something which tends to be viewed as a whole or as a single entity, rather than as one of a number of items which can be counted as individual units. Singular verb forms are used with uncountable nouns. Uncountable nouns are substances, concepts etc that we cannot divide into separate elements. We cannot "count" them. For example, we cannot count "milk". We can count "bottles of milk" or "litres of milk", but we cannot count "milk" itself. We usually treat uncountable nouns as singular. We use a singular verb. Countable nouns are easy to recognize. They are things that we can count. For example: "pen". We can count pens. We can have one, two, three or more pens. We can say that it is finished investigation of this theme our diploma work.

The present material can be used at the lessons of grammar, practical course of English language, lexicology, and speech practice in both: universities and English classes at schools. This paper can help to create the teaching aids, textbooks, etc. Teachers and students might use the results of the present work for the further investigations.

IV. Bibliography

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15. Иванова И.П., Бурлакова В.В., Почепцов Г.Г. Теоретическая грамматика современного английского языка. - М.,1981. - 285 c.

16. Ильиш Б.А. Строй современного английского языка (теоретический курс). М.-Л., 1971. - 315 с.

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19. Glencoe Language Arts “Grammar and Composition Handbook” Grade 6, Columbus, Mc,Grow Publishers 2002 pp.79-94

20. Cramer R, et al. Language Illinois, 1989 pp.200-212

21. Качалова К.Н., Израилевич Е.Е. Практическая грамматика английского языка с упражнениями и ключами. М, 1997. с.20-41, 487-489

22. World Book Encyclopedia Vol.1 NY. 1993 pp.298-299

23. Internet:http://www.esllessons.edu/mainpage.htm

24. Internet:http://www.freeesays.com/languages/S.Hal

V. APPENDIX

Table 1

Table 2

Table 3

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