6.- THE NOUN PHRASE 1
6. The Noun Phrase
6.1. Some general tendencies
GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES ASSOCIATED WITH THE NOUN
Gender A grammatical category which displays such contrasts as
masculine/feminine/neuter or animate/inanimate. A distinction is drawn between natural
gender, which involves reference to the sex of real-world entities, and grammatical gender,
which is associated with arbitrary word classes, and signals grammatical relationships
between words in a sentence. English has natural gender. (from Crystal, D. 1992. An
Encyclopedic Dictionary of Language and Languages. Harmondsworth: Penguin: 151)
Gender The classification of nouns into two or more classes with different grammatical
properties. In many of the world’s languages, all the nouns are divided into two or more
classes which require different grammatical forms on the nouns and/or certain other words
grammatically linked with the noun or nouns in particular sentences. [...] A gender language
must have at least two gender classes, but it may have more -eight, ten, or possibly even
more. In some gender languages, we can often guess from the form of a noun which gender
it belongs to; in others, we can often guess from its meaning which gender it belongs to; in
very many languages, however, we cannot guess, because gender assignment is arbitrary. In
German, for example, a noun which denotes a male or a female usually (not always) goes
into the der gender or the die gender, respectively, and nouns with certain endings usually go
into a predictable gender. After that, though, the gender of the remaining nouns is impossible
to guess. In Navaho, nouns denoting humans usually go into one gender, nouns denoting
round things into a second gender, nouns denoting long stiff things into a third gender, and
so on, but not all nouns can have their gender guessed in this way. It is important to realize
that grammatical gender need have nothing to do with sex. In German (and other European
languages), there is a noticeable (but imperfect) correlation between sex and gender
assignment; however, most nouns denote things that have not sex, and yet they must still be
assigned to a gender. In many other gender languages, sex plays no part at all in gender
assignment. English, it is worth pointing out, has no gender. We have a few sex-marked
pronouns like he and she, and a few sex-marked nouns like duke and duchess, but we have
no grammatical gender. (from Trask, R.L. 1999. Key Concepts in Language and Linguistics.
London: Routledge: 100).
Number The grammatical category, most often associated with nouns and pronouns,
whose primary correlation is with the number of distinguishable entities. English has a
simple two-way number contrast between singular and plural, but some other languages
exhibit more elaborate number systems involving dual, trial and paucal forms as well as
singular and plural. Except perhaps in pronoun systems, number is not universally present in
languages; Chinese and Japanese are two examples of languages in which number contrasts
are generally absent. (Trask, R.L. 1993. A Dictionary of Grammatical Terms in
Linguistics.London: Routledge: 192).
In Arabic a noun typically has three forms: malikun ‘king’, malikani ‘two kings’, malikuna
‘three or more kings’; the second form is called the dual. The Pacific language Larike has
four forms for pronouns: mane ‘he’ or ‘she’, matua ‘they two’, matidu ‘they three’, mati
‘they (four or more)’; the third form is the trial. The East African language Tigre has a
different system: färäs ‘horse’,?äfras ‘a few horses’, ?äfresam ‘horses’; the second form is
the paucal. (Trask, R.L. 1999. Key Concepts in Language and Linguistics. London:
Routledge: 210).
, 6.- THE NOUN PHRASE 2
Case A distinctive, overtly marked form which can be assumed by an NP to indicate that that
NP bears some identifiable grammatical or semantic relation to the rest of the sentence. In
English, overt case marking is confined to a few pronouns (I/me; they/them), but some other
languages, such as German, Russian, Latin, Basque and Finnish, exhibit elaborate case
systems typically involving about three to six distinct forms, but sometimes a dozen or more.
(Trask, R.L. 1993. A Dictionary of Grammatical Terms in Linguistics.London: Routledge:
34).
6.1.1. Towards simplification (cf. section 5.6)
In Old English, nouns are inflected for gender, number and case. In Present-day English
only number is marked. The history of English reflects the loss of gender and case and a
drastic simplification of plural marking.
6.1.2. From grammatical gender to natural gender
The history of English illustrates a shift from grammatical gender (OE) ⇒ natural
gender (from ME onwards).
Indo-European probably had only two genders, animate and inanimate. Later on, it
seems that the animate class was divided into masculine and feminine.
The grammatical gender of an OE noun could not be predicted from its meaning
(reference to sex or other extra-linguistic category) or from its form (although this is
possible with some nouns, e.g. -ung nouns are always feminine).
3 genders in OE:
(i) Masc. nouns brōðor ‘brother’, fæder ‘father’
wīfmann ‘woman’
stān ‘stone’, dæg ‘day’
(ii) Fem. nouns mōdor, ‘mother’, cwēn ‘woman, queen’
mūs ‘mouse’
bōc ‘book’
sāwol ‘soul’
(iii) Neu. nouns scip ‘ship’, hūs ‘house’
wīf ‘woman’, cild ‘child’, mægden ‘maiden’
