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The lexico-grammatical meaning of a class (or of a subclass) of words is, as we know, an abstraction from the lexical meanings of the words of the class, and depends to a certain extent on those lexical meanings. Therefore singularia tantum usually include nouns of certain lexical meanings. They are mostly material, abstract and collective nouns, such as sugar, gold, butter, brilliance, constancy, selfishness, humanity, soldiery, peasantry.
Yet it is not every material, abstract or collective noun that belongs to the group of singularia tantum (e. g. a plastic, a feeling, a crowd) and, what is more important, not in all of its meanings does a noun belong to this group.
As we have already seen0, variants of the same lexeme may belong to different subclasses of a part of speech. In most of their meanings the words joy and sorrow as abstract nouns are singularia tantum.
E.g. He has been a good friend both in joy and in sоггоw. (Hornby).
But when concrete manifestations are meant, these nouns are countables and have plural opposites, e. g. the joys and sorrows of life.
Likewise, the words copper, tin, hair as material nouns are usually singularia tantum, but when they denote concrete objects, they become countables and get plural opposites: a copper — coppers, a tin — tins, a hair — hairs.
Similarly, when the nouns wine, steel, salt denote some sort or variety of the substance, they become countables.
E. g. an expensive wine — expensive wines.
All such cases are not a peculiarity of the English language alone. They are found in other languages as well. Cf. дерево — деревья and дерево .is a material noun, платье — платья and платье as a collective noun.
‘Joy’ and ‘a joy’, ‘beauty’ and ‘a beauty’, ‘copper’ and ‘a copper’, ‘hair’ and ‘a hair’ and many other pairs of this kind are not homonyms, as suggested by some grammarians0 , but variants of lexemes related by internal conversion.
If all such cases were regarded as homonyms, the number of homonyms in the English language would be practically limitless. If only some of them were treated as homonyms, that would give rise to uncontrolled subjectivity.
The group of pluralia tantum is mostly composed of nouns denoting objects consisting of two or more parts, complex phenomena or ceremonies, e. g. tongs, pincers, trousers, nuptials, obsequies. Here also belong some nouns with a distinct collective or material meaning, e.g. clothes, eaves, sweets.
Since in these words the -s suffix does not function as a grammatical morpheme, it gets lexicalized and develops into an inseparable part of the stem 0. This, probably, underlies the fact that such nouns as mathematics, optics, linguistics, mumps, measles are treated as singularia tantum.
Nouns like police, militia, cattle, poultry are pluralia tantum, judging by their combinability, though not by form 0.
People in the meaning of 'народ' is a countable noun. In the meaning of 'люди' it belongs to the pluralia tantum. Family in the sense of "a group of people who are related" is a countable noun. In the meaning of "individual members of this group" it belongs to the pluralia tantum. Thus, the lexeme family has two variants:
Sg. PL
1) family families
2) — family
E. g. Almost every family in the village has sent a man to the army. (Hornby).
Those were the oldest families in Jorkshire. (Black).
Her family were of a delicate constitution. (Bronte).
Similar variants are observed in the lexemes committee, government, board, crew, etc.
Colour in the meaning "red, green, blue, etc." is a countable noun. In the meaning "appearance of reality or truth" (e. g. His torn clothes gave colour to his story that lie had been attacked by robbers. A. Hornby.) it has no plural opposite and belongs to the singularia tantum. Colours in the sense of "materials used by painters and artists" has no singular opposite and belongs to the pluralia tantum.
Thus, the lexeme has three variants:
Sg. Pl.
1) colour colours
2) colour —
3) — colours.
When grammarians write that the lexical meanings of some plurals differ from those of their singular opposites 0, they simply compare different variants of a lexeme.
Sometimes variants of a lexeme may belong to the same lexico-grammatical subclass and yet have different forms of number opposemes.
Cf. brother (son of same parents) — brothers
brother (fellow member) — brethren
fish — fish (e.g. I caught five fish yesterday.)
fish — fishes ('different species', e. g. ocean fishes).
A collective noun is a word that designates a group of objects or beings regarded as a whole, such as "flock", "team", or "corporation". Although many languages treat collective nouns as singular, in others they may be interpreted as plural. In British English, phrases such as the committee are meeting are common (the so-called agreement in sensu "in meaning", that is, with the meaning of a noun, rather than with its form). The use of this type of construction varies with dialect and level of formality.
All languages are able to specify the quantity of referents. They may do so by lexical means with words such as English a few, some, one, two, five hundred. However, not every language has a grammatical category of number. Grammatical number is expressed by morphological and/or syntactic means. That is, it is indicated by certain grammatical elements, such as through affixes or number words. Grammatical number may be thought of as the indication of semantic number through grammar.
Languages that express quantity only by lexical means lack a grammatical category of number. For instance, in Khmer, neither nouns nor verbs carry any grammatical information concerning number: such information can only be conveyed by lexical items such as khlah 'some', pii-bey 'a few', and so on.
Most languages of the world have formal means to express differences of number. The most widespread distinction, as found in English and many other languages, involves a simple two-way number contrast between singular and plural (car / cars; child / children, etc.). Other more elaborate systems of number are described below.
2.2 Structural Semantic Characteristics of English Nouns
2.2.1 Morphological Characteristics of Nouns
Due to the following morphological characteristics nouns can be classified in following ways:
1. Nouns that can be counted have two numbers: singular and plural (e. g. singular: a girl, plural: girls).
2. Nouns denoting living beings (and some nouns denoting lifeless things) have two case forms: the common case and the genitive case.
3. It is doubtful whether the grammatical category of gender exists in Modern English for it is hardly ever expressed by means of grammatical forms.
There is practically only one gender-forming suffix in Modern English, the suffix -es, expressing feminine gender. It is not widely used.
heir —heir-ess
poet — poet-ess
actor — actr-ess
waiter — waitr-ess
host - host-ess
lion — lion-ess
tiger — tigr-ess0
2.2.2 Syntactical Characteristics of Nouns
Due the syntactical characteristics nouns can be classified in following ways:
The chief syntactical functions of the noun in the sentence are those of the subject and the object. But it may also be used as an attribute or a predicative.
The sun was rising in all his splendid beauty. (Dickens) (subject)
Troy and Yates followed the tourists. (Heym) (object)
He (Bosinney) was an architect ... (Galsworthy) (predicative)
Mary brought in the fruit on a tray and with it a glass bowl, and a blue dish... (Mansfield) (attribute; the noun glass is used in the common case)
The hero and heroine, of course, just arrived from his father's yacht. (Mansfield) (attribute; the noun father is used in the genitive case)
A noun preceded by a preposition (a prepositional phrase) may be used as attribute, prepositional indirect object, and adverbial modifier.
To the left were clean panes of glass. (Ch. Bronte) (attribute)
Bicket did not answer, his throat felt too dry. He had heard of the police. (Galsworthy) (object) She went into the drawing-room and lighted the fire. (Mansfield) (Adverbial modifier).
"Stop everything, Laura!" cried Jose in astonishment. (Mansfield) (Adverbial modifier).
The noun is generally associated with the article. Because of the comparative scarcity of morphological distinctions in English in some cases only articles show that the word is a noun.
A noun can be modified by an adjective, a pronoun, by another noun or by verbals.
2.2.3 Characteristics of nouns due the way of their composition
According to their morphological composition we distinguish simple, derivative and compound nouns.
1. Simple nouns are nouns which have neither prefixes no suffixes. They are indecomposable: chair, table, room, map, fish, work.
2. Derivative nouns are nouns which have derivative elements (prefixes or suffixes or both): reader, sailor, blackness, childhood, misconduct, inexperience.
Productive noun-forming suffixes are:
-er: reader, teacher, worker
-ist: communist, telegraphist, dramatist
-ess: heiress, hostess, actress
-ness: carelessness, madness, blackness
-ism: socialism, nationalism, imperialism
Unproductive suffixes are:
-hood: childhood, manhood
-dom: freedom
-ship: friendship, relationship
-meat: development
-ance: importance
-ence: dependence
-ty: cruelty
-ity: generosity
3. Compound nouns are nouns built from two or more stems. Compound nouns often have one stress. The meaning of a compound often differs from the meanings of its elements.
The main types of compound nouns are as follows:
(a) noun-stem+noun-stem: appletree, snowball;
(b) adjective-stem+noun-stem: blackbird, bluebell;
(c) verb-stem+noun-stem: pickpocket; the stem of a gerund or of a participle may be the first component of a compound noun:
dining-room, reading-hall, dancing-girl.
2.2.4 Semantical Characteristics of Nouns
Nouns fall under two classes: (A) proper nouns; (B) common nouns0.
a) Proper nouns are individual, names given to separate persons or things. As regards their meaning proper nouns may be personal names (Mary, Peter, Shakespeare), geographical names (Moscow, London, the Caucasus), the names of the months and of the days of the week (February, Monday), names of ships, hotels, clubs, etc.
A large number of nouns now proper were originally common nouns (Brown, Smith, Mason).
Proper nouns may change their meaning and become common nouns:
"George went over to the table and took a sandwich and a glass of champagne. (Aldington)
b) Common nouns are names that can be applied to any individual of ad ass of .persons or things (e.g. man, dog, book), collections of similar individuals or things regarded as a single unit (e. g. peasantry, family), materials (e. g. snow, iron, cotton) or abstract notions (e.g. kindness, development).
Thus there are different groups of common nouns: class nouns, collective nouns, nouns of material and abstract nouns.
1. Class nouns denote persons or things belonging to a class. They are countables and have two. numbers: singular and plural. They are generally used with an article.
"Well, sir," said Mrs. Parker, "I wasn't in the shop above a great deal." (Mansfield)
He goes to the part of the town where the shops are. (Lessing)
2. Collective nouns denote a number or collection of similar individuals or things as a single unit.
Collective nouns fall under the following groups:
(a) nouns used only in the singular and denoting-a number of things collected together and regarded as a single object: foliage, machinery.
It was not restful, that green foliage. (London)
Machinery new to the industry in Australia was introduced for preparing land. (Agricultural Gazette)
(b) nouns which are singular in form though plural in meaning:
police, poultry, cattle, people, gentry They are usually called nouns of multitude. When the subject of the sentence is a noun of multitude the verb used as predicate is in the plural:
I had no idea the police were so devilishly prudent. (Shaw)
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