III. The relation expressed by the Possessive case
II. The declinable and the indeclinable
Lecture #3. The category of case
1. The definition
2. The declinable and the indeclinable nouns.
3. The relation expressed by the Possessive case.
4. Different views on the category of case.
The definition: The category of case of the noun expresses relations between the thing denoted by the noun and other things of properties or actions by means of the grammatical morpheme.
The most general view is that the category of case of an English noun is expressed by the opposition of the Common case and the Possessive case. The Possessive case is the marked member of the opposition. It is marked in form by means of the apostrophe s and it is marked in meaning because the meaning in the Possessive case is rather narrow. The Common case is the unmarked member of the opposition. It is not marked in form because it is characterized by the zero morpheme, and it is not marked in meaning, because its meaning is very wide. It includes the meaning of the six cases of the Russian nouns and their shades of meanings.
Not all the nouns in Modern English can form the Possessive case. With regard to the category of case nouns fall into two lexico-grammatical subclasses:
declinable and indeclinable.
The subclass of declinable nouns is limited. It includes
1) Nouns which denote living beings i.e. animate nouns: Pete’s friend, sister’s copybook.
2) Some inanimate nouns which denote groups of people (government, party, committee). E.g. the committee’s decision.
3) Nouns which denote units of time and space: week, year, mile, kilometer.
E. g. a week’s absence, a mile’s distance.
4) Nouns which denote names of countries and cities: Moscow’s population, England’s export.
5) Nouns in set expressions: at a stone’s throw, to one heart’s desire, at arm’s length.
6) Some substantivised adverbs (today, yesterday): today’s newspaper, yesterday’s report.
In Modern English there is a tendency to use the –s inflection even more widely, practically with all the nouns. For example, A.Hailey uses in his books such words as engine, telephone, car, room in the Possessive case:
e. g. The telephone’s ringing was an interruption. He was conscious of the room’s simplicity.
The meaning of the possessive case is rather narrow and it is limited to the meaning of the following relations:
1. The possessive case denotes the relations of possession or belonging (my sister’s book, Pete’s bed);
2. Personal or social relations (my friend’s parents – the possessive case denotes personal relations, the dean’s secretary – the possessive case denotes social relations).
3. The relations of the whole and its part (the cat’s tail, the boy’s leg).
4. Subjective relations (my father’s arrival).
The noun in the possessive case denotes a person who performed a certain action and the noun following it, it denotes an action performed.
Their relations are subjective because they remind us of the relation between the subject and the predicate: my father’s arrival → my father arrived.
5. The relations of authorship (Byron’s poems, my friend’s letter).
6. Adverbial relations (yesterday’s meeting → meeting which was held yesterday).
7. Quantitative or qualitative relations: a month’s leave- quantitative (how long it lasts), man’s clothes – qualitative (Whose? What kind of?).
Due to the fact that the possessive case denotes not only the relations of possession but a number of other relatives (as we have just seen), some linguists call this case the Genitive case. This term is used in the book “English grammar” by Kobrina and others (например «Очерки по морфологии современного английского языка» Бархударова). In the text-books for secondary schools they use the term the Possessive case (it’s easier to use the term the Possessive case at school – it denotes possession).