Syntactic Functions. The article. Property of substance, partial nominative value

An attempt to improve on the category of number has been made by A. Isachenko, who introduced the category of discreteness. According to this view, plurality may have a meaning of number or of distinguishable parts (e.g. trousers, scissors). Yet this theory fails to explain such nouns as people, police, cattle. The category of discreteness is a notional, or functional-semantic one. It has as its nucleus the grammatical category of number.

            4.3.      Case, There is no unity of opinion as to the number of cases in the present-day English.

Most of linguists think there are 2 cases in English : the Common Case and the Possessive Case (the Genitive).

Others claim there are 4: to the two mentioned above they add the Dative (expressed by the preposition "t" and the word order) and the Accusative (by word order alone). Yet B. A. Ilysh rightfiilly claims that once we admit that the category case can be expressed by non-morphological means we can find an even greater number of cases.

There is also a view according to which there is no case in English at all. The proponents of this view support their opinion by saying that's is attachable not only to nouns but to phrases as well (e.g. somebody else's child). Yet this argument cannot be taken as a decisive one on the issue; though's is formally detached it is semantically bound to the corresponding noun.

Thus we can say that the category of case in the present-day English language is a morphological one. Yet it is undoubtedly syntactically relevant, which is reflected in the syntactic fijnctions of nouns in the two cases: nouns in the common case are subjects or objects in a sentence; nouns in the possessive case are attributes.            -f"

Synonymy of the 's genitive and the of-phrase. These are not in a complementary distribution; e.g. Dr Brown's son is the son of Dr. Brown. Sometimes they differ semantically; e.g. the girl's story - the story of a girl.

's genitive is restricted in its usage, while the of-phrase can be used with practically all nouns.

             5.           Syntactic Functions

The noun possesses the most varied set of syntactic functions as compared with other parts of speech. The most common among them are those of the subject and of the object. Nouns can also perform a predicative fiinction being part of a composite nominal predicate; e.g. She is a singer. The attributive function of the noun constitutes a specific feature of English; e.g. a stone wall, a rose garden. There are several approaches to considering the status of N1 in this combination.

1.  A. I. Smimitsky and O. S. Akhmanova consider the combination N1 + N2 to be an occasional composite word. This view cannot be taken on account that the word is a stable unit; we can hardly agree with the theory of its spontaneous creation and decomposition.

2.  The authors of The Concise Oxford Dictionary consider N1 to be an adjective formed by conversion from the corresponding noun. But N1 does not acquire any features of adjectives such as gradation of quality; e.g.* a very stone wall, or combinability with adverbs; e.g. * a beautifully rose garden.

3.  => N1 is an attributive noun. It can be modified by adjectives; e.g. nuclear weapons test; a First World War graveyard.

THE ARTICLE

The place of the article in the system of the present-day English is one of the most complicated theoretical problems (yet without any grave consequences to the practice of teaching it). A comparison with other languages is of no help here (in German it is declinable, thus it is a word; in Bulgarian it is attached to a word , thus it is a morpheme). It is obvious that it should be studied in connection with the noun and the non-morphological category of the Functional Sentence Perspective. It means that though morphologically relevant, the problem of the article cannot be considered within the bounds of morphology. According to the one of comparatively recent theories (S. D. Katznelson). it represents the textual category of definiteness / indefiniteness. The main semantic function of the article is the actualization of the notion theme./ rheme.

The categorial meaning of the adjective is that of the property of a substance. It can be the material, color, dimension, position, or state of a substance. Adjectives describe a permanent property Yet the degree of permanence of the quality expressed by an adjective may vary depending on the syntactic position of the adjective: Cf visible stars - the stars visible.