Grammar as a phenomenon – a subsystem of language as a linguistic discipline

9. The noun. The category of article determination


Noun as a part of speech:

5. 
   Semantic – a part of speech which categorial meaning is thingness
   
6. 
   Formal – a) form-building – the category of number, the category of case, the category of gender, the category of article determination
   

b) derivational – typical word-building patterns: suffixation, compounding, convertion (to walk – a walk)
3) Functional – a) combinability: left-hand prepositional combinability with another N/V/Adj./Adv. [+ prep.Noun],casal combinability [N's+N]( .: the speech of the President — the President's speech), contact comb-ty [N+N]- stone-wall constructions, take an intermediary position between compound nouns and noun phrases (stone wall, car roof, speech sound), comb-ty with articles and other determiners [art./det. + N]
b) Syntactic functions – subject, object, other functions are less typical
Nouns fall into several subclasses which differ as to their semantic and grammatical properties: common — proper, concrete — abstract, countable — uncountable (count — non-count, count — mass), animate — inanimate, personal — non-personal (human — non-human).
Lexico- semantic variants of nouns may belong to different subclasses: paper — a paper, etc.
The class of nouns can be described as a lexico-grammatical field. Nouns denoting things constitute the centre (nucleus) of the field. Nouns denoting processes, qualities, abstract notions (predicate nouns) are marginal, peripheral elements of the field.

• 
  Nucleus and periphery are distinguished on the basis of lexico-semantic properties and morph. characteristics – subclasses of Nouns
  
• 
  The nucleus -> common- concrete-countable- animate Nouns
  
• 
  The periphery -> abstract – material- uncountable Nouns
  

The category of article determination
Many scholars recognize the category of definiteness/indefiniteness (article determination).
The meaning of definiteness or indefiniteness is expressed differently in different languages: in russian it is expressed lexically, syntactically (word order) and morphologically ( case forms of some nouns)
Lexically:
Definiteness: demonstrative pronouns (это,то) I have read this book. + the particle то (coll.) Книга-то хорошая? – Is the book good?
Indefiniteness: indef. pronouns Какой-то человек напомнил мне.. A man reminded me of…; the numeral один Живет тут один человек – There lives a man over there.


Syntactically: Word order
В комнату вошел мальчик <какой-то>
Мальчик вошел.. <знаем,какой>
A boy entered the room.
The boy entered the room.


Morphologically: case forms

Дай мне сахар; тот, что стоит на столе (в шкафу)

Дай мне сахару <сколько-то ,некоторое количество>
Give me the sugar.
Give me some sugar.

In some languages it is expressed as a special grammatical category and the article is spelled in one word with the noun ( the way a true inflexion does)

Bulgarian Море – морето
Romanian univers – universal
Swedish hus – huset