Lecture 1

1.Language Levels
2.Differences and similarities in grammars
Language levels
Language (Speech) is divided to certain strata or levels. The linguists distinguish basic
and nonbasic (sometimes they term them differently: primary and secondary) levels.
This distinction depends on whether a level has got its own unit or not. If a level has
its own unit then this level is qualified as basic or primary. If a level doesn't have a
unit of its own then it is a non-basic or secondary level. Thus, the number of levels
entirely depend on how many language (or speech) units in language.

The most wide-spread opinion is that there are five language (speech) units and
respectively there are five language (speech) levels, they are:
1. phonological/phonetical level: phoneme/phone
2. morphological level: morpheme/morph
3. lexicological level: lexeme/lex
4. Syntax - minor: sentence
5. Syntax - major: text

When talking about the levels one has to mention about the distinction between
language and speech because the linguistics differentiates language units and speech
units.
The main distinction between language and speech is in the following:
1) language is abstract and speech is concrete;
2) language is common, general for all the bearers while speech is individual;
3) language is stable, less changeable while speech tends to changes;
4) language is a closed system, its units are limited while speech tend to be openness
and endless.

The lowest level in the hierarchy of levels has two special terms: phonology and
phonetics.
Phonology is the level that deals with language units and
phonetics is the level that deals with speech units.
The lowest level deals with language and speech units which are the smallest and
meaningless. So, the smallest meaningless unit of language is called phoneme; the
smallest meaningless unit of speech is called phone.
If we compare the pronunciation of ‘low’ and ‘battle’, we’ll hear the difference in [l].
The alternants in pronunciation are called allophones (variants, options or
alternants) of one phoneme.

The second level in the hierarchy of strata is called morphological. There's only one
term for both language and speech but the units have different terms: morpheme
for language and morph for speech. This level deals with units that are also smallest
but in this case they are meaningful. So the smallest meaningful unit of language is
called a morpheme and the smallest meaningful unit of speech is called a morph.
The morphs that have different forms, but identical (similar) meanings are united
into one morpheme and called "allomorphs". The morpheme of the past tense has
at least three allomorphs, they are /t/, /d/, /id/. Examples: worked, phoned and
wanted.

The third level is lexicological which deals with words. Word may be a common term
for language and speech units. Some linguists offer specific terms for language and
speech: lexeme for language and lex for speech. “Lexeme” is a language unit of the
lexicological level which has a nominative function. "Lex" is a speech unit of the
lexicological level which has a nominative function. Both lexeme and lex nominate
something or name things, actions phenomena, quality, quantity and so on, e.g.,
tree, pen, sky, red, worker, friendship, ungentlemanly. An abstract lexeme "table" of
language is used in speech as lex with concrete meaning of "writing table", "dinner
table", "round table", "square table".
Allolexes are lexes that have identical or similar meanings but different forms: start,
commence, begin

The next level is syntax - minor which deals with sentences. The term "Syntax -
minor" is common one for both language and speech levels and their unit "sentence"
is also one common term for language and speech units.
The abstract notion "sentence" of language can have concrete its representation in
speech which is also called "Sentence". Example: "An idea of writing a letter” on the
abstract language level can have its concrete representation in speech: John writes a
letter. A letter is written by John.
Since one and the same idea is expressed in two different forms they are called "allo
- sentences". Some authors call them grammatical synonyms. Thus, sentence is
language and speech units on the syntax - minor level, which has a communicative
function.

In the same way the level syntax - major can be explained. The unit of this level is
text – the highest level of language and speech. "Syntax- major" represents both
language and speech levels due to the absence of separate term as well as "text" is
used homogeneously for both language and speech units.

The language and speech units are interconnected and interdependent. This can
easily be proved by the fact that the units of lower level are used to make up or to
build the units of the next higher level: YOUR EXAMPLE

2.Differences and similarities in grammars

One of the most fundamental claims of modern linguistic analysis is that all
languages have a grammar. It could not be any other way. If a language is spoken, it
must have a phonetic and phonological system; since it has words and sentences, it
must also have a morphology and a syntax; and since these words and sentences
have systematic meanings, there must obviously be semantic principles as well.
These are the very things that make up a grammar.
Unfamiliar languages sometimes appear to have no grammar simply because their
grammatical systems are different from those of better-known languages. In Walbiri
(an indigenous language of Australia), for example, the relative ordering of words is
so free that the English sentence “The two dogs now see several kangaroos” could
be translated by the equivalent of any of the following sentences.
Dogs two now see kangaroos several.
See now dogs two kangaroos several.
See now kangaroos several dogs two.
Kangaroos several now dogs two see.
Kangaroos several now see dogs two.
Rather than showing that Walbiri has no grammar, such differences simply
demonstrate that it has a grammar that is unlike the grammar of English in certain
respects. This point holds across the board: although no two languages have exactly
the same grammar, there are no languages without a grammar.
Moreover, there is no such thing as a 'good grammar' or a 'bad grammar'. In fact, all
grammars do essentially the same thing: they tell speakers how to form and
interpret the words and sentences of their language. The form and meaning of those
words and sentences vary from language to language and even from community to
community.
Universality in grammar
In considering how grammars can differ from each other, it is easy to lose sight of
something even more intriguing and important—the existence of principles and
properties shared by all human languages.
For example, all languages use a small set of contrastive sounds that help distinguish
words from each other (like the [t] and [d] sounds that allow us to recognize ‘to’ and
‘do’ as different words. All languages have more consonant sounds (p, t, d, etc.) than
vowel sounds (a, e, i); any language that has a [b] sound also has a [p] sound.
Some languages (like English) place question words at the beginning of the sentence.
e.g.Mary sees a book. What do you see?
Other languages, like Mandarin, make no such changes.
But no language uniformly places question words at the end of the sentence.
Word-order: take three-word sentences such as “Canadians like hockey”, for
instance. There are six logically possible orders for such sentences.
Canadians like hockey.
Canadians hockey like.
Like Canadians hockey.
Like hockey Canadians.
Hockey like Canadians.
Hockey Canadians like.
More than 95 percent of the world's languages adopt one of the first three orders as
basic statements. Only a handful of languages use any of the last three orders as
basic.

Grammars change over time

The grammars of all languages are constantly changing. Some of these changes are
relatively minor and occur very quickly (e.g., Internet, e-mail, cyberspace). Other
changes have a more dramatic effect on the overall form of the language and
typically take place over a long period of time.
One such change involves the manner in which we negate sentences in English. Prior
to 1200, English formed negative constructions by placing ‘ne’ before the verb and a
variant of ‘not’ after it.
a)Ic ne seye not. ('I don't say.')
b)He ne speketh nawt. (He does not speak.')

By 1400 or thereabouts, ‘ne’ was used infrequently and ‘not’ (or ‘nawt’) typically
occurred by itself after the verb.
I seye not the wordes.
We saw nawt the knyghtes.
It was not until several centuries later that English adopted its current practice of
allowing ‘not’ to occur after only certain types of verbs (such as do, have, will, and so
on).
I will not say the words. (versus I will say not the words.)
He did not see the knights. (versus He saw not the knights.)
These changes illustrate the extent to which grammars can be modified over time.

Lecture 2
1.Definition and structure of grammar
2.The lexical and grammatical in language
3. Grammatical categories and grammatical forms

1. Definition and structure of grammar

There are two shades of meaning of the word "grammar“: objective grammar and
subjective grammar. When we speak of grammar as part of language it will be
objective grammar. When we speak of a course in grammar or a book in grammar, it
is subjective grammar.
How many grammars can a certain language have? If we mean objective grammar,
the answer will be one. But when we mean courses or books in grammar, the answer
will be many.

There are different kinds of books and courses in grammar:

-primary, practical and normative grammars for beginners,
-advanced practical normative grammars for students,
-comparative or typological grammars which study grammatical facts of kindred or
non-kindred languages on a comparative basis,
-historical grammar as a part of the history of a certain language ,
-general grammar as a part of theoretical linguistics,
-theoretical grammar of a certain language.
Nowadays modern approaches to grammatical studies include: descriptive grammar,
transformational, generative grammar and contrastive grammar or typology.
 Inner division of grammar
Grammar consists of two parts: morphology and syntax which cannot be mixed up.
Reasons:
1) they belong to different structural levels of language: morphology deals with
words and their grammatical categories which belong to the conceptual level of
language; while syntax is concerned with higher units (phases and sentences) which
belong to the communicative level of language.
2) Morphology and syntax are different methods in dealing with linguistic units.
Syntax regards language facts in linear aspect, that is, it studies the ways of
combining words into utterances (phrases and sentences); while morphology studies
grammatical properties of words and their grammatical categories.
3) Morphology and syntax have different tasks. The former studies all properties of
parts of speech; while the latter studies methods of making sentences and different
types of sentences.
Note! Phraseology partly belongs to lexicology and partly to syntax

Relation between morphology and syntax

We subdivide grammar into morphology and syntax for scientific and methodological
purposes. In actual speech they work together. However, not all morphological
phenomena are equally related to syntax. Some of them are syntactic by their nature
and by their function, e.g., case forms are morphological by their forms but they
exist to express certain syntactic functions. The same can be said about other
grammatical categories: person, number, gender which are always reflected in
syntax, though actually these facts are not syntactic by their nature.

2. The lexical and grammatical in language

a)books b)My father works at a factory
pens His mother teaches at a school
trees Her sister goes to school
forks Our teacher explains us the rules
common features: ___________
different features:____________
Preliminary conclusion: what is individual in language units is not grammar, and what
is common in these units belongs to grammar

Another very important feature of the grammatical in language is that grammatical

meanings are based on strict correlation: we distinguish the plural number because
there is the singular number, we distinguish the present tense because there are
other non-present tenses (future and past). In lexis correlation makes separate
couples of antonyms. This correlation is limited: day-night, white-black, good-evil. At
this stage we can make a comprehensive conclusion: the principal feature of the
grammatical in language is that it includes common traits of language units (words
and sentences) and that the common is based on a strict correlation.
There other distinctive features of the grammatical in language:
-grammar organizes lexis enabling us to make communicative units (sentences)
-grammar is a closed system (not easily admitting of the new elements) while lexis is
an open system easily admitting of new words
-grammar facts are compulsory, therefore the use of them is but little influenced by
the content of actual speech (unlike the choice of lexis)
-while lexis is expressed in language mostly by roots, grammatical phenomena are
usually expressed by inflections, intonations and word-order.
Grammar is a part of language that organizes lexis and constitutes the structure of
language. Grammar is based on common features of language units and on strict
correlation.

3. Grammatical categories and grammatical forms

Grammatical meanings are strictly correlated. This means that there cannot exist a
grammatical meaning in language without its counterpart. Such kindred meanings
are correlated on some wider grammatical conception. E.g., the singular number and
the plural number both mean number; the present tense, the past tense and the
future tense are correlated on the conception of tense common to all of them.

Correlation itself can be defined as opposition of meanings of the same order, that is
belonging to the same wider conception, e.g., the present tense can be correlated
only with some other tense, but not with number or degree of comparison. In the
basis of any grammatical correlation lies some wider grammatical conception, e.g.
number, tense, aspect, comparison. This wider conception is a grammatical
category.

The grammatical category is a more or less wide grammatical conception that lies
in the basis of grammatical correlation. Grammatically correlated meanings make
the smallest grammatical system of meanings and forms which is called a
grammatical paradigm. A paradigm is the smallest grammatical system of
correlated meanings and forms based on only one grammatical category.
Therefore, we can define a grammatical category as a system of meanings and forms
based on one paradigm.

The example of a grammatical paradigm:

NUMBER
(a grammatical conception: category)
SINGULAR PLURAL
(gram.meaning) (gram.meaning)
Table Ø (zero inflection) Tables (inflection –s)
(gram.form) (gram.form)
Any grammatical meaning must have its own specific form for its expression, without
which a grammatical meaning cannot be detected and identified.
Any material means of expressing a grammatical meaning is grammatical form.
There are different kinds of grammatical forms:
1)inflections (work-worked);
2)self-gradation – (begin-began, begun);
3) suppletive forms, that are forms derived form different roots (good-better, the
best, go went , gone; many, much, more, most);
4)formal words – auxiliaries (be, do, have, shall, will);
5)word order (“father killed a bear”, or “a bear killed a father”)
6)intonation and stress.

Zero forms. The absence of a positive indicator of a certain grammatical meaning

included in a paradigm is a zero form.
E.g., Ask - Asked – will ask
the form "ask" in comparison with "asked" has a zero termination, and in
comparison with "will ask" has a zero auxiliary.

The analytical forms. When one grammatical meaning is expressed by more than
one word of which at least one must be purely formal, that grammatical form is an
analytical one, e.g. am writing, was broken, will come, has arrived, don’t like.

Such forms are included into a paradigm along with synthetic forms (likes, liked), e.g.
the grammatical category of aspect: continuous (analytical: was sleeping) – indefinite
(synthetical: sleeps); the degrees of comparison with –er, –est (synthetical- bigger,
the biggest) can go along with “more, the most” (analytical - more important, the
most important).

Lecture 3
1. Analytic and synthetic languages
2. History of parts of speech distinction
3.Parts of speech in modern English

1. Analytic and Synthetic languages

Among various classifications of languages (genealogical, typological, structural, etc)

we distinguish synthetic and analytic languages. The synthetic languages are such in
the grammar of which synthetic techniques prevails, i.e. in which grammatical and
lexical meanings are united in one word. Such languages abound in inflections and
rarely resort to form-words. The analytic languages are such in the grammar of
which analytic technique prevail, i.e. in which grammatical and lexical meanings are
expressed in separate words. These languages have but few inflections, and usually
express grammatical meanings by auxiliary words.
From this point of view, the English language is considered highly analytic one,
however we should not underestimate its rather numerous synthetic forms. e.g. The
category of number of nouns is expressed only synthetically (table-tables); the basic
forms of the verb as well as the main finite forms of the verbs ( the present and the
past indefinite) are synthetic (he plays, he played).

Of course, analytic forms in English are prevailing: alongside with the synthetic forms
of degrees of comparison of adjectives and adverbs we widely use analytical forms of
comparison; in the verb we have analytical continuous and perfect, as well as
analytic forms of passive voice; even in the indefinite tenses we form the
interrogative and negative forms analytically; all future and future-in-the-past forms
are analytical.

Historically, some European languages (English, French especially) have come over
from synthesis to analysis. There were two reasons of the appearance of analytic
forms:
1) inner development of a certain language may demand creation of a new
grammatical category. In this case a language tries to find its inner resources for the
expression of a new meaning and often finds the means among the existing lexical
phrases. This actually occurred with the development of the English continuous and
perfect forms and the auxiliaries of the future tenses or the passive voice and
analytic forms of degrees of comparison.

As is known, modern Perfect Tenses are formed by means of the auxiliary verb to
have followed by the past participle of the notional verb. In Old English the past
participle was not an intrinsic part of the tense but was regarded as an adjective in
apposition to the object governed by the verb have; the participle agreed in case
(accusative) with the object: I have written my letter meant I have my letter written.
It was quite natural that these forms were at first used with transitive verbs; the
corresponding forms of intransitive verbs were generally formed with the verb be. In
such constructions the participle always agreed with the subject. He is come meant
He is in the state of being come. But when the origin of the have-forms had been
forgotten, they were gradually extended to intransitive verbs as well: He has gone;
He has come; He had gone; He had come.

2) the development of the language is also determined by the history of the people
speaking that language. We see that analysis developed mostly in the language
whose people had undergone historic admixtures of nations speaking different
languages. What happens in such a case? Inflections (synthetic elements)
deteriorate, fall off and instead phraseological substitutes develop which take the
place of the old synthetic forms. In English, for instance, the whole system of
substantival cases had deteriorated and now is substituted by prepositional of-
phrase.

It's interesting to mention that most of the synthetic forms have developed from
analytic ones. Inflections were separate words. What is the reason for that?
Language is one of human activities and it conforms with the universal law of
economy effort. Languages which have no reason to develop new analytic forms not
only retain their synthetic forms, but make new synthetic forms out of analytic ones
as these are more economic, e.g. the suffix –ed of the English verb developed from
the past form of the verb DO (work did - worked). In the Ukrainian reflexive –cя\сь
we usually trace the separate word СЕБЕ –дивитися, вчитись.

2. History of parts of speech distinction.

The history of linguistic categorization of parts of speech in Europe begins with Plato
who considered some language-related philosophical questions: why a dog is called
a dog and not a cat. Some attention is devoted to dividing a sentence into two major
components - the nominal one (onoma) and the verbal one (rheme). Thus, Plato
approached the problem of "noun-verb" distinction in terms of "subject" versus
"predicate". Since Plato's focus was purely syntactic (i.e. based on sentential
analysis), Platonic "nouns" and "verbs" do not exactly correspond to nouns and
verbs

Aristotle added a further distinct class of "conjunctions" (covering conjunctions,

pronouns and the article) to the Platonic system. This class included all those words
which were neither nouns nor verbs but which served to combine nouns and verbs.
Aristotle included adjectives among the "verbs". The inflectional criterion was not
yet at play. Both for Plato and Aristotle, parts of speech were parts of sentences:
words became nouns or verbs only when they were put into sentences, outside of
a sentence they had no categorical affiliations.

The inflectional criterion to establish word classes was brought into play by the
Stoic grammarians. Their major theoretical achievement was distinguishing case
which was the fundamental distinction between nouns and verbs. They drew the
borderline between the group of case inflected pronouns and articles, on the one
hand, and the group of invariant prepositions and conjunctions, on the other hand.
The Stoics made another very important contribution – recognition of the temporal
and aspectual meanings inherent in the tense forms.

A turning point in the history of linguistic classification was the appearance in the
late 2nd century BC of the Greek grammar by Dionysius Thrax. He was a
representative of the Alexandrian school which built further on what was achieved
by the Stoics. Dionysius Thrax suggested organizing words into eight classes.
1. NOUN; 2. VERB; 3.PARTICIPLE; 4.ARTICLE; 5.PRONOUN; 6.PREPOSITION;
7.ADVERB; 8.CONJUNCTION.

The Alexandrians recognized such noun categories as gender (masculine, feminine,

neuter), form (simple, compound), number (singular, dual, plural), case (nominative,
vocative, accusative, genitive, dative).
During the Middle ages scholars tried to adjust the patterns adopted for Latin and
Greek vocabulary to all European languages. This give rise to so-called universalist
grammars (prescriptive grammars). These grammars pursued the goal to follow Latin
grammar rules in other languages and literary to establish norms for languages.
One of the first scientific English grammars was composed by Henry Sweet,
published in 1898. Sweet suggested the division based on three criteria:
morphological, syntactic and semantic. The first division of English vocabulary was
drawn along declinable and indeclinable words.
Declinables were further divided into
noun-words that include proper names, noun numerals (cardinals), noun-pronoun
(person, indefinite), infinitives and gerund.
The second group is composed of adjective-words: adjectives, adjective-pronoun
(possessive), adjective-numerals (ordinal) and participles.
Verbs – finite and infinite forms– made up the third group.
As to indeclinables they presented the so-called “dustbin class” and included
conjunctions, prepositions, modal verbs.

The Danish representative of classical scientific grammar of the 20th century, Otto
Jespersen, in The Philosophy of Grammar (1924) proposes a dual system: together
with the description of the traditional parts of speech with their morphological
peculiarities and lexical meaning, the linguist analyzes these word classes from the
point of view of their functions in syntactic combinations (word combinations and
sentences). Certain words may be primary, i.e. they may be the core of a word
combination or the subject of a sentence. A word may also be secondary, i.e. it may
modify primary words. Jespersen also distinguishes tertiary words, i.e. words
subordinated to secondary ones.
As a result, Jespersen distinguishes the
following parts of speech:
NOUN;
ADJECTIVE;
PRONOUN;
VERB.

Emilia Morokhovskaya suggests dividing words (or parts of speech) into lexical and
functional.
Lexical parts of speech are linguistic signs that possess denotative ability. They are
names of extralingual objects and phenomena: a door, a state, to create, bright,
directly, etc. Their nominative character enables them to perform various syntactic
functions in a sentence – they may function as a sentence part and represent the
nucleus of the word combination. Functional parts of speech do not denote any
object, concept, quality or action. Function-words are used to mark certain types of
relation between lexical words, word combinations and sentences: the bend in the
road, villages and cities, a village, a city – articles, prepositions, conjunctions,
particles.

3.Parts of speech in modern English

Parts of speech are groups of words with common properties. They are not classes in
the strict sense of the word, because grouping into parts of speech involves a
number of criteria. These criteria are:
1)the general semantics of a part of speech
2)morphological properties (grammatical categories of a part of speech)
3)syntactic functions in which a given part of speech can be used
4)a degree of specific shape (affixes, word-building)

Parts of speech are grouped into notional and functional. The notional parts of
speech in English are: noun, adjective, pronoun, numeral, verb, adverb. Many
notionals in English are variable, i. e. they may change their nature depending on the
contextual environment and their functional significance: "blue" may be noun (the
blue of the sky), adjective (the blue sky), or verb (to blue smth.).
As to the functional parts of speech they are: conjunctions, prepositions, particles,
exclamations, articles. The present-day English has the article which is missing in
Ukrainian.
Generally speaking we can say that all nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs are
capable of making direct reference and are the main units which carry the burden of
referential information, and that all other words provide functional information.

Lecture 4
1. Nouns in English:
the category of number, case, gender, the category of definiteness/indefiniteness
2.Numerals in English

The category of number

The only morphological category of the noun which is almost always marked in
present-day English is that of number. It is mostly realized synthetically, i.e. through
zero and marked inflexions respectively,e.g: child - children, ox - oxen, and baths,
cargos, jubilees, bushes.

Traditionally the category of number is defined as the one that shows whether we
speak of one subject or more than one. But because some single objects are used
only in the plural form (scissors, trousers), a better definition of the category of
number can be suggested. Number shows whether the inner segmentation of a
conception is expressed or not. If such a segmentation is expressed then this
conception can have two numbers. If such a segmentation is not expressed then we
can speak about a noun as having a singular number or plural number.

In the English language there is also the formation of plural number by way of sound
interchange: foot -feet, tooth - teeth, goose - geese; man - men, woman - women;
louse - lice, mouse-mice.

A few simple life nouns have in English one and the same form for singular and plural
(grouse, sheep, deer, swine, plaice). Usually, these nouns also have the zero marked
plural form: carp, pike, trout, deer, salmon. Apart from the genuinely English there
are some borrowed noun inflexions: stimulus - stimuli, curriculum – curricula,
criterion-criteria, basis-bases.
In English we recognize classes of singularia tantum (only singular) and pluralia
tantum (only plural).

The singularia tantum include some semantic groups of mainly common nouns like:

1. Nouns denoting parts of the world: the North, the South, the East, the West,
the North-West.

2. Names of materials: gold, silver, iron, copper, milk, butter, snow, dirt, sand,
water, hay, straw, bread, coffee, sugar, wood, etc.

3. Collective nouns: brushwood, foliage, leafage, furniture, shrubbery, rubbish,

peasantry, hair, professorate, womankind, etc.

4. Abstract notions: courage, knowledge, advice, recognition, friendship, kindness,

news, information, business, love, peace, patriotism, weather, etc.

Pluralia Tantum Nouns

 Summations nouns: trousers, shorts, tongs, scissors, scales, spectacles, eye-

glasses, opera-glasses, leggings, strachies, pincers, etc.

 Names of remnants: scraps, slops, sweepings, sittings, leavings, remnants, etc.

 Names of some games: drafts, cards, darts, skittles, billiards, etc.

 Some abstract and concrete notions: outskirts, tidings, (inverted) commas,

goings-on, contents, etc.

 Some geographical names: Athens, the Netherlands, the Alps, the Urals, the
Carpathians, the Azores, the Bermudas, the Philippines, etc.

The category of case

Unlike the category of number, the category of case in present-day English has
always been disputable. Some grammarians found in present-day English two cases
(O. Jespersen, V. Yartseva), others found in English four cases (G. Curme, M.
Deutschbein), and still other grammarians were inclined to see in English five, six and
more cases. R. Quirk, S. Greenbaum and co-authors speak of common and genitive
cases (-'s genitive and of-genitive).

In modern linguistics a case is defined as a morphological category of the noun

manifested in the forms of noun declension and showing the relations of the nounal
referent to other objects and phenomena. This category is expressed in English by
the opposition of the form –'s, usually called the possessive case or genitive case, to
the unfeatured form of the noun, usually called the common case. The common
form is absolutely indefinite from the semantic point of view, whereas the
possessive form has a parallel prepositional construction: my father's house, the
house of my father.

Speaking of the possessive case, it is necessary to mention some restrictions on its

use in English. Nouns in the possessive case perform only one function in a sentence
– that of an attribute. In other words, possessive case may appear in a ‘noun+noun’
phrase, e.g., a teacher’s book. However, the common case may also be used in this
function, e.g., a stone wall. Semantic difference between these syntactically identical
forms is quiet obvious: the possessive case expresses an individual characteristic,
whereas the common case denotes the result of generalization.
Discuss two examples:
Shakespeare's sonnets
the Shakespeare National Theater

Consequently names of living beings usually appear in the possessive case (Plato’s
classification of words);
names of inanimate entities may be used in the possessive case quite rarely
(exceptions are: the names of seasons, distance and price – week's notice, at a mile's
distance, a dollar's worth coffee).

Group possessive.

In English the 's sign may be related to more than one word – to a whole group of
words. E.g. Mary and Ann's room, the man over there's dog. Such practice in English
is called group possessive. The scholars suppose that this possessive case has
undergone the process of syntaxicalization: the 's sign separated form the stem and
modifies word combinations has turned into a syntactic marker.

The category of gender

In a language the category of gender must be strictly oppositional. The classical

gender opposition contains 3 members: masculine gender, feminine and neuter
gender.
The morphological category of gender in Ukrainian is identified either through
separate inflexions of the adjunct or through the inflexion of the finite form of the
verb that conjugates with a noun. For example:каштан цвів, вода замерзла, жито
цвіло.

The majority of scientists believe that the grammatical category of gender

disappeared from the English language by the end of the Middle English period.
What has survived the time is the possibility of lexical indication of the biological sex.
Means that provide this indication are purely lexical or derivational: boy-girl, cock-
hen, bull-cow, he-goat - she-goat; English suffixes -er/-or, -ess, -o, -ine express the
morphological gender, e.g.,
emperor, widower, actress, goddess, heroine.
All lifeless things in English are generally associated with the pronoun it (the neuter
gender), e.g., The tree and its leaves; the desire and its realization; the stone and its
age.
When personified, English life and lifeless nouns may be referred to different
genders. In spoken English all strong or fearful animals, birds and natural
phenomena or celestial objects are usually referred to masculine gender. Thus, the
wolf, the dog, the buffalo, like the tiger, the lion, the elephant or the eagle are
referred to masculine gender. All weaker, timid or sly animals and birds are referred
to the feminine gender. Hence, the cat, the fox or the hare, the nightingale, or tomtit
are each referred to feminine gender (she).

The names of vessels (boat, ship, steamer, cruiser) and vehicles (coach, car, carriage)
are usually associated with feminine gender. So are the names of hotels and inns.
The names of celestial bodies may be feminine, masculine and neuter. The sun which
is strong and powerful is, naturally, he, whereas the moon, the Paradise and the
Earth are associated with the pronoun she (feminine gender).
The current tendency to avoid gender suffixes (-ess,
-ette, -woman, -man,-lady, -lord) should be emphasized. Such words are replaced by
neologisms with no sex indication: stewardess - flight attendant, cameraman –
videographer, policeman - police officer, chairman- chair.

The Category of Definiteness and Indefiniteness

When a noun is taken out of its context its meaning may not be definitely
understood, i.e. identified.
The main means of making the noun definite in English is to use the definite or
indefinite article or any other determiner. For example: Bristiol (zero arcticle) means
the town of Bristol, whereas the Bristol is the name of a hotel or an inn, ship.
The category of definiteness may be also indicated by syntactic means. Namely, by a
noun or a substantivized numeral, an adjective or any other adjunct: e.g., the Tory
government, King Henry V, the first Summit meeting.

The category of indefiniteness apart from being indicated in English by the indefinite
article a/an, may also be made explicit by the indefinite pronouns any, some, etc.,
and by the numeral one. E.g: There is some boy, who wants to see you.

Numerals in English
The numeral has at lexico-grammatical meaning expressing quantity (two, ten,
twenty-one,). It may denote a part of an object (one-third) or order of some objects
(the first, the tenth).
The numerals can combine:
a) with nouns (four days);
b) with pronouns (all three);
с) with numerals (two from ten);
d) with adverbs (the two below/ahead);
e) with the infinitive (the first to сотe), etc.
In the sentence the numeral performs the same function as the noun (cardinal
numerals) and the adjective (the ordinal numerals), i.e. it can be:
a subject (Four are present),
an object (I like the second),
an attribute (It is my second trip),
a simple nominal predicate (cthe two there), an adverbial modifier (they marched
three and three).

All numerals fall into subclasses:

1) cardinal; 2) ordinal and 3)fractionals. Cardinal numerals denote number: three,
five, ten. Ordinal numerals denote order of persons or objects and are used in
English speech with the definite article: the third, the fifth., etc.

Fractions in English are divided into:

common fractions, e.g., 4/10 or 7/100: four over ten and seven over one hundred; 2
1/3: two and one third;
decimal fractions, e.g., 0.4 and 0.07. point four and point zero seven or nought
point four and nought point zero seven; 2.35: two point three five; 25.01: two five
point nought one or twenty-five point nought one.