Shrnutí - morfologie

Some nouns end in -ics but are not usually plural

example: athletics, gymnastics, mathematics, physics, electronics, economics, politics

Gymnastics is my favorite sport.

News is not plural

example: What time is the news on television?

means a means of transport many means of transport

series a television series two television series

species a species of bird 200 species of bird

Some singular nouns are often used with a plural verb. For example:

government, staff, team, family, audience, committee, company, firm

These nouns are all groups of people. We often think of them as a number of people (they), not as one thing (it). So we often use a plural verb:

The government (they) want to increase taxes.

The staff at the school (they) are not happy with their new working conditions

In the same way, we often use a plural verb after the name of a sports team or a company:

Scotland are playing France next week (in a football match).

Shell have increased the price of petrol.

We always use a plural verb with police.

Do you think the police are well-paid?

The police have arrested a friend of mine.

We think of a sum of money, a period of time, a distance etc. as one thing. So we use a singular verb:

Twenty thousand pounds (it) was stolen in the robbery.

Three years (it) is a long time to be without a job.

Six miles is a long way to walk every day.

GENDER

- in English "natural gender" is used and it barely concerns nouns, and is mainly marked only on personal pronouns and possessives

Contrasting nouns (people, animals) - morphologically unmarked:

example: man-woman, boy-girl, bachelor-spinster, bull-cow, pig-saw, stallion-mare,...

Contrasting nouns - morphologically marked: feminine suffix -ss:

example: actress, waitress, hostess, lioness, goddess

example: saleswoman, woman judge, she-goat, My accountant says he..., If a student wants more inf. he/she... (plural becomes more and more common in these cases)

GENETIVE

- mainly used for "possession" but also expresses relationship, favors, actions, purpose, characteristics

1) expressed morphologically: -'s, s'

- usually used for people and mammals +

geographical reference: America's policy

institutional ref.: the European Economic Community's Export

place noun + superlative: New York's tallest ...

time reference: two day's journey

cars, planes, ships

fixed expressions: at arm's length, at death's doors, for goodness' sake

2) expressed periphrastically by "of": universal

The genitive functions as a determiner therefore if we need to use another determiner with the same noun, we have to use the genitive as a post-modifier

example: a friend, of Jim's, the friend of Peter's I told you about

Coordinated nouns form a "group genitive" if the head noun relates to all of them together:

example: My uncle and my aunt's house X my mother's and my father's interests

English has two articles: the definite and indefinite article. As we know, all English common nouns have article contrast, so with plural count nouns and noncount nouns, the absence of an article signals the absence of another kind of article --- the zero article. In this sense, there’re three articles --- the definite, the indefinite, and the zero article.