Курсовая с практикой на тему Grammatical category of noun in English based on the book “The hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy” by Douglas Adams.

Содержание:

INTRODUCTION 3
CHAPTER I. MORPHOLOGICAL FEATURES OF NOUNS 6
1.1 Morphological characteristics of nouns 6
1.1.1 General characteristics of the genus category 6
1.1.2 Generic markers in English 10
1.2 The grammatical category of the number of nouns in English 12
CHAPTER 1. – Summary of Results 17
CHAPTER II. PRACTICAL ANALYSIS OF NOUN IN THE NOVEL “THE HITCHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY” BY DOUGLAS ADAMS 19
2.1 The creative way of Douglas Adams 19
2.2 Noun’s in “The hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy” 21
CHAPTER 2. – Summary of Results 35
CONCLUSION 36
REFERENCES 38

Введение:

The language is the most important way of formation and existence of human knowledge about the world. Reflecting the objective world in the process of activity, a person fixes the results of cognition in language. Stylistic is interested in the behavior of parts of speech in texts of different functional styles, the specifics of the implementation of their grammatical categories, the use of grammatical forms, the degree of their activity of lexico-grammatical categories of nominal parts of speech. Any implementation of the statement will require referring to categories. The ability to categorize (i.e., to put people or things into groups with the same features) is an important skill for people [17, p. 144]. The study of categories expands the scope of understanding of the thinking process itself, which makes it possible to predict possible communicative actions of a person. Categorization also plays an important role in many formal learning domains such as biology, psychology, physics, and chemistry. Not surprisingly, people’s ability to learn to categorize information has been well researched. Categorization is one of the ways to organize and systematize the surrounding world. The understanding of the essence of the categorization process in certain periods of the development of cognitive theory underwent radical changes; the existing concepts were criticized and challenged. These language processes are reflected in the works by B. A. Ilyin, K. Brunner, R.A. Korolenko, G. Kvirk, E. M. Popkova, A. I. Smirnitsky, I. P. Ivanova, V. M. Yartseva and other scientists. Different accounts of categorization exist in the literature (Erickson and Kruschke, 1998; Ashby and Maddox, 2005). One account is that categorization is based on rules and definitions. Another is that objects are categorized based on their similarity to other members of the category or to a prototype. Features showing variability across objects may be informative in that they potentially indicate meaningful differences between categories and can hence be used to infer the rules underlying categorization (i.e., which features are either relevant or irrelevant). The central thesis of the coursework and object which is going to be explored is “grammatical category of noun”. It is the broad theme which is not only one of the most important in English, but also one of the most relevant and widely investigated aspects of the language. Before going into specifics on this subject, it is necessary to tell about goals and objectives of this work, explain its relevance, describe the research process. All of the above makes it possible to consider the disclosure of the problem of the development of the grammatical category of the noun as relevant, necessary and required in the study of the English language. The category of gender, its diversity and semantics at the present stage of the development of linguistics have not been fully studied. The category of numbers is of great importance in the language itself, as it is the basis for the correct construction of sentences and utterances. Talking about the relevance of the selected theme it’s necessary to emphasize that nouns are the most numerous class of words which stands at 42% of all parts of speech. Moreover, nouns are divided into various types which are treated in different ways, so the ones who do not know ways of their appropriate usage can make mistakes in this “treatment”.
The purpose of the work is to consider the categories of nouns in the grammar of the English language based on the book “The hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy” by Douglas Adams. This goal involves solving the following tasks:
- To define the concept of "category".
-To determine the stylistic possibilities of individual morphological categories.
- To consider the categorical features of nouns on the example of a work of art, in particular on the example of D. Adams novel “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”.
The object of this study is the categorical features of nouns in English.
The subject of research is nouns in D. Adams' novel “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”.
Research methods. To solve the tasks, the following methods of scientific research were used: theoretical analysis of scientific literary sources, synthesis, generalization, comparison, and concretization. The practical value of the work lies in the fact that the data obtained as a result of the research can be used to solve applied problems in linguistics and English when considering the topic of noun categories. The materials of the course work can be used in theoretical research on the problems of general and particular theory of English grammar.
This research has the visible practical significance and high value reflecting modern trends in English and clarifying the relevant problem of correct usage of nouns according to their grammatical categories.
The structure of the study. The course work consists of an introduction, two chapters, a conclusion and a list of references.
The introduction presents the characteristics of the main parameters of the study: the relevance of the goal is formulated, the object, subject and methods of research are defined, and its purpose and tasks defined are designated.
The first chapter of the work, the theoretical part is devoted to the definition of noun and its categories (gender, number, case and determination). The theoretical part includes several items and serves to achieve such objectives as:
1. giving definitions to the key terms within the research area;
2. emphasizing the main features of English nouns;
3. defining and classifying the grammatical categories which characterize nouns;
4. Describing the theoretical views of researchers in this field;
The practical сchapter presents a detailed description of nouns used in the novel “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by D. Adams. The goals of the practical part which is the most significant are:
1. to identify and present the methods of the practical study;
2. to conduct the practical study according to selected methods analyzing nouns in the literary text.
In the conclusion the results of the scientific investigations conducted within the theoretical and practical parts of the coursework will be summed up. In bibliography part more than 20 sources which were used in the process of research will be pointed out. They include scientific-literary and electronic sources (linguistic books, abstracts, articles, dictionaries and websites).

Заключение:

This work was devoted to the study of nouns in the novel by the famous writer D. Adams. During the study we have solved all the tasks set to achieve the goal research and made the following conclusions.
The most important task in the study of nouns is to consider the types of nouns and the means of expressing their category. The work described the categories of gender, case and number of nouns. Basically, attempts to establish in English the presence of a category of gender for nouns are based on the fact that personal pronouns of the 3rd person singular, which act as substitutes for nouns, have a clear division into genders. However, this division is a feature of pronouns, not nouns, and is conveyed in a lexical way. Based on the foregoing, we can conclude that in modern English the gender of a noun depends solely on the gender of its animation.
In this work, we have carefully considered, in full, all forms of plural formation of nouns in English. In English, modern and classical, there are different ways of expressing plural and singular at different levels of the language. The singular form, in addition to the numerical value of the singularity itself, can express both a holistic and a collective totality. While the plural forms of an English noun can express the plurality itself in its various moments.
The peculiarity of the category of determination lies in the fact that the noun primarily denotes not a specific object or even a set of objects, but a certain set of properties that an object may have so that it can be called one or another noun.
Determination in the language can be qualitative - reflects the degree of awareness about the subject, as well as quantitative - indicates the quantitative characteristics of the subject.
In the case when there is no lexical determiner with the noun, the noun is determined with the definite article the, or with the help of the indefinite article a/an, and also through the absence of the article, otherwise called the “zero article”.
D. Adams is able to masterfully create whole complexes of stylistic devices with the participation of both common nouns and proper names in the corresponding article forms. According to the results, in the novel, abstract nouns are used in speech more often than concrete ones, allowing the use of a synonymic series and expressing shades of meaning. The largest lexical groups of abstract nouns are groups of words denoting emotions, thinking, sensations and states.
The most relevant syntactic functions that nouns took in the sentence were as complements, as subjects. The major claim of this study is that nouns in English do not constitute a uniform group; in fact, they display a variety of syntactic functions within the sentence directly reflecting their nominal and complements, subject’s properties.

Фрагмент текста работы:

CHAPTER I. MORPHOLOGICAL FEATURES OF NOUNS
1.1 Morphological characteristics of nouns
According to the dictionary of linguistic terms, A.S. Akhmanova, a noun is a part of speech characterized by the categorical meaning of subjectivity, lexico-grammatical category of gender and grammatical categories of case and number, syntactic use in a sentence as a subject, complement or predicative term, and the noun is also used in sufficiently developed models of word formation [1]. The noun has the power, by way of nomination, to isolate different properties of substances (i.e. direct and oblique qualities, and also actions and states as procession characteristics of substantive phenomena) and present them as corresponding self-dependent substances. The term "noun" is a translation from the Latin word substantius, which means "substance", "essence". In English, a noun is a part of speech that names predicates, living beings, substances, various phenomena and abstract concepts.
It is the main nominative part of speech, representing nomination of the fullest value within the framework of the notional division of the lexicon. As a part of speech, the noun is also characterized by a set of formal features determining its specific status in the lexical paradigm of nomination. It has its word-building distinctions, including typical suffixes, compound stem models, conversion patterns. It discriminates (выражает) the grammatical categories of gender, number, case, and article determination. Nouns were divided into three genera: masculine, feminine and neuter, but belonging to a certain genus was not pronounced. It was more of a grammatical category than a lexical one. In English, a noun has grammatical categories of number and case. The grammatical category of gender was present in Old English, but it completely disappeared at the end of Middle English.
1.1.1 General characteristics of the genus category
Grammatical gender is one of the most interesting problems of grammar, because, on the one hand, it is connected and interacts with a number of morphological categories, and on the other hand, its content characteristics depend on the semantics of lexemes, their valence. In English, nouns do not have a morphological index of gender, gender appears in accordance with pronouns and nouns (the man - he, the woman - she).
Grammatical gender arose on the basis of primitive categories of animate nouns and inanimate. From the category of animate nouns, two genders stood out - masculine and feminine, respectively, concerning the concepts of living beings, and then spread to other names.
M.Y. Bloch defines the category of gender as a category that is expressed by the correlation of nouns with personal pronouns of the third person singular. If the noun refers to "he", then it is masculine. If we are talking about "she", then this is a feminine gender. If it is called "it", then it is a neuter gender. Theoretically, grammarians persistently note the generic differences of the English noun. M.Y. Bloch supports the opinion of A.I. Smirnitsky, according to which the category of gender is a semantic category. And at the same time, he does not exclude that gender is a grammatical category [4, p.52].Similarly, linguists such as L. Timpko [26], P. A. Ilyin, N.F. Irtenev and V.S. Sidorov note that there are no grammatical or morphologically expressed gender categories in English. Together with A.I. Smirnitsky [24], she cites as a definition of the generic category "natural gender", i.e. the correspondence between natural or biological division by sex [26, p.2]. In the course of its development, the category of gender in English has moved from the category of grammatical categories to the category of lexical. The same opinion is shared by I.P. Ivanova, L.P. Chakhoyan and T.M. Belyaeva [12, p. 108].
The grammatical category presupposes a number of homogeneous grammatical meanings opposed to each other, which are systematically expressed by certain formal indicators [12, p. 68]. Lexico-grammatical categories have the following properties:
1) are combined by common semantic features. For example, collective, real nouns, nouns - names of creatures (zoonyms), nouns - names of persons, common names,