2017-11-01
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Besides the classification given above, nouns can be divided into countable and uncountable. Countable nouns have singular and plural forms that can be built in different ways.
1. Most of the nouns build their plural form by adding the ending -s or -es. The ending -s/es can be pronounced in different ways:
- The ending -s is pronounced [ iz ] after sibilants and affricates, e.g. noses, horses, bridges;
- The ending -s is pronounced [ z ] after vowels and voiced consonants other than sibilants and affricates, e.g. beds, bees;
- The ending -s is pronounced [ s ] after voiceless consonants other than sibilants and affricates, e.g. caps, books.
The ending -es is added in the following cases:
- if a noun ends in -s, -ss, -x, -sh, -ch, -tch, e.g. bus - buses, glass - glasses, box - boxes, brush - brushes, bench - benches, match - matches;
- if a noun ends in -y preceded by a consonant (-y is replaced by-i), e.g. lady - ladies;
Note: In proper nouns the ending -s is added: Mary – Marys.
If the final -y is preceded by a vowel, the ending -s is added: day – days.
- if a noun ends in -o preceded by a consonant, e.g. hero - heroes, potato – potatoes.
Note: There are some exceptions, e.g. piano - pianos, photo - photos, solo - solos;
If -o is preceded by a vowel, the ending -s is used, e.g. cuckoo – cuckoos, portfolio - portfolios.
Some nouns have both forms: mosquito - mosquitos, mosquitoes.
With certain nouns the final voiceless consonants are replaced with corresponding voiced consonants and either – es or –s isadded; the change in pronunciation isn’t necessarily reflected in spelling:
| f – v | Ө - ð | s – z | |
| Calf – calves Knife - knives Leaf - leaves Life - lives Sheaf - sheaves Shelf - shelves Thief - thieves Wife - wives Wolf - wolves | Bath - baths Path - paths Oath - oaths | House - houses | |
| Exceptions: roof - roofs, gulf – gulfs, proof – profs; scarf - scarves, scarfs, dwarf - dwarfs, dwarves | Exceptions: smith - smiths, month - months | In other nouns [s] remains voiceless |
2. The following nouns form their plural by changing the root vowel: man -men, woman - women, foot - feet, tooth - teeth, goose - geese, mouse -mice, louse - lice.
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3. The following nouns form the plural by adding the ending -en: ox - oxen, child - children, brother – brethren (poetic).
4. The following nouns have homonymous singular and plural forms: a deer – deer, a sheep – sheep, a swine – swine, a fish – fish, a craft – craft; some nouns ending in –s in singular do not change in plural: a means – means, a headquarters – headquarters, a series – series, a species – species, a works – works.
5. The noun person has two plural forms: people and persons; but the form ‘ persons’ is used in formal context:
There are 4 people waiting for you.
This vehicle takes 4 persons.
6. Some nouns borrowed from Latin and Greek keep their original plural forms: analysis – analyses, bacterium – bacteria, basis – bases, crisis – crises, criterion – criteria, curriculum – curricula, datum – data, focus – foci, formula – formulae, nucleus – nuclei, phenomenon – phenomena, thesis - theses. Some of them can also have regular forms, e.g. focuses, formulas.
Some nouns that originally were plural are coming to be uncountable:
the data are → the data is; the media are → the media is.
In compound nouns the ending is usually added to the head word, if it is a noun stem. It can be either initial or final: a brother-in-law – brothers-in-law, a passer-by – passers-by, a lady-bug – lady-bugs.
If there is no noun stem in a compound noun, the ending -s is added to the final element: forget-me-not – forget-me-nots, a grown - up – grown-ups.
If the second element of a compound noun is -man, the root vowel is changed: a sportsman – sportsmen, a postman – postmen.
If the first element of a compound noun is man or woman, both elements are changed according the rules: a man-servant – men-servants, a woman-doctor – women-doctors.
There are nouns in English that have only plural forms:
- some nouns denoting pieces of clothing, trousers, shorts, pyjamas (pajamas); tools and instruments binoculars,glasses, spectacles, scissors, scales, games billiards, cards, dominoes, draughts and nouns that do not refer to any particular semantic group such as belongings, contents, clothes, goods, headquarters, outskirts, premises, refreshments, surroundings, thanks, troops, whereabouts have plural meaning and are not used in the singular;
- nouns denoting subjects or science, such as phonetics, physics are usually used as singulars;
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- the noun politics can be used both as singular and plural;
- the noun news is treated as singular.
THE CATEGORY OF CASE
Case indicates the relation of the noun to the other words in the sentence. Nouns denoting living beings and some lifeless things have two cases: the common case and the genitive case.
The common case is the uninflected form, i.e. it has no grammatical ending. The genitive case is the inflected form. It is formed by adding -'s (the apostrophe s) to the noun in singular and only ' (apostrophe) to the nouns in plural ending in -s, e.g. girl - girl's, girls - girls', man - man's, men - men's, but: Dickens - Dickens', Dickens's.
The "apostrophe s" may refer to a whole group of words, e.g. brother and sister's, Jane and Mary's.
The ending -s is pronounced [ iz ] after sibilants and affricates, e.g. prince's, witch's, judge's, Dickens's.
It is pronounced [ z ] after vowels and voiced consonants other than sibilants and affricates, e.g. mother's, man's.
It is pronounced [ s ] after voiceless consonants other than sibilants and affricates, e.g. bishop's, student's.
There are two forms of the genitive case. They are the dependent genitive and the absolute genitive. The dependent genitive precedes the noun it modifies, while the absolute genitive is used without a noun.
The dependent genitive with nouns denoting living beings has several meanings:
- It denotes possession or possessive meaning, e.g. Mary's book;
- It denotes family relations, e.g. John's brother;
- It has partitive meaning (when a part of a whole or a part of a body is named), e.g. the baby's eyes, this family's member;
- It denotes a doer of an action or creation (subjective genitive) or an object of an action (objective genitive), e.g. Tom's step, Tom's reception;
- It denotes qualitative relations, e.g. officer's uniform, student's gown.
The genitive case of the nouns naming lifeless things may denote the relations between a part and the whole, e.g. ship's deck. In most cases this meaning is expressed without the ending - 's, e.g. a computer keyboard.
The genitive case is widely used with nouns denoting time, space, weight, place, e.g. (a) two days' leave, the field's edge, a pound's worth, Asia's largest city, etc.
There are some peculiarities that should be remembered:
- We can built compound nouns according the model “noun + noun” to express measurements: a ten-dollar note, a two-week course, a five-mile walk, a two-bedroom cottage, a four-pound chicken, a two-storey house;
- The noun “worth” can be preceded only by a noun in the genitive case: five-dollars’ worth of candies, a pound’s worth of apples, twenty rubles’ worth of butter;
- Time measurement can be expressed by nouns in the genitive case and by compound nouns (the use of the indefinite article is different in these cases): a day’s trip, five days’ trip, a five-day trip, ten minutes’ break, a ten-minute break;
- The common case of nouns denoting days and parts of the days are used when we speak about things or events that happen regularly: the evening newspaper, an evening show, a Sunday meeting; the genitive case is used when we speak about some particular things or events: last Saturday’s match, tomorrow’s newspaper, yesterday’s show.
The absolute genitive can be used anaphorically (instead of the noun it modifies): Her face resembles her brother's.
It can also have local meaning, i.e. denote some place, e.g. at the baker's, at my Mom's.
The absolute genitive may be introduced by the preposition of:
She is no relation of Mary's.
The phrase "something of somebody" is alternative to the dependent genitive in some of its meanings. It can be used to express family relations, creation and place, e.g. the twinof the girl, the 5th symphony of Beethoven, the largest cities of Asia. It is generally used in order to draw attention to the word put at the end of the phrase and it is more common in formal and written English. The phrase can express quantity when used with lifeless things, e.g. a glass of water. It is not used to express possession.
GENDER
There is no grammatical gender for nouns in English. Few nouns referring to living beings can be male or female, e.g. waiter - waitress, lion - lioness, actor - actress, salesman - saleswoman, etc. In other cases the nouns denote either male or female beings, e.g. man - woman, uncle - aunt, brother - sister, son - daughter.
Nouns denoting lifeless things are usually treated as neuter, but the nouns sea, ship, Britain can be referred to as female: Look, she is a nice ship.
