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Borrowings from French.
The influx of French words continued in the late 15th & in the late 17th c. These French borrowings mainly pertain to diplomatic relations, social life, art & fashion. French remained the international language of diplomacy for several hundred years; Paris led the fashion in dress, food & in social life & to a certain extent in art & literature; finally, the political events in France in the 18-19th c. were of world-wide significance.
Examples of diplomatic terms are: attaché, communiqué, dossier;
social life: ball, café, coquette, hotel, picnic, restaurant;
art: ballet, ensemble, essay, genre;
military terms are: brigade, maneuver, marine, police;
fashions in dress & food: blouse, corsage, cravat, champagne, menu, soup.
Words of miscellaneous character are: comrade, detail, entrance, fatigue, garage, machine, moustache, progress, ticket.
Most of these words haven’t been assimilated in English, retaining their spelling, the sounds & the position of the stress.
21.The Noun
The noun is the main nominative part of speech, having the categorical meaning of 'substance' and 'thingness'. The noun is characterized by a set of formal features. It has its word-building distinctions, including typical suffixes, compound stem models, conversion patterns. It has the grammatical categories of gender, numer, case, article determination. The most characteristic function of the noun is that of the subject in the sentence. The function of the object in the sentence is also typical of the noun, other syntactic functions, i.e. attribute, adverbial and even predicative are not immediately characteristic of its substantive quality. The noun is characterized by some special types of combinability. It is the prepositional combinability with another noun, a verb, an adjective, an adverb.
E.g. an entrance to the house; to turn round the corner; red in the face; far from its destination. The casal combinability characterizes the noun alongside of its prepositional combinability with another noun. E.g. the speech of the President - the president's speech. English nouns can also easily combine with one another by sheer contact. In the contact group the noun in pre-position plays the role of a semantic qualifier to the noun in post-psition. E.g. film festivals, a cannon ball.
The lexico-grammatical status of such combinations has been a big problem for many scholars, who were uncertain as to how to treat this combination, either as one separate compound word or a word-group.
In the history of linguistics it is called 'The cannon ball problem' (or the stone wall problem).
Category of Gender (expression of gender)
In modern English gender as a grammatical category is characteristic of the 3-d person singular of the personal and reflexive pronouns: he - she - it; himself - herself - itself. The dividion of nouns into masculine, feminine and neuter nouns (father, mother, table) is not grammatical but semantic.
The only gender - forming suffix of the feminine gender '-ess' is limited in use (actress, tigress, lioness). The masculine forming suffix '-er' is added only to one noun - window - windower. English nouns denoting anymals are usually referred to neuter gender as nouns denoting inanimate things (Where is the cat? - It is in the garden). When the idea of sex is stressed, such nouns may be of masculine or feminine gender, and sex if often shown by special words, i.e. lexically: Tom - cat, she - cat, lady - cat, male - elephant, he - dog, etc. In poetry and high prose Engish nouns get gender reference when personified (love, sun, hatred, anger (m), moon (f)). This is a traditional personification which originates from Latin literature. In English fables, fairy tales, nouns are personified and get gender at the writer's will: Next day the Rabbit went to see his friend the Sable; she had many daughters. Feminine gender is given to a noun denoting an animal, bird or insect when maternal instinct is referred to: e.g. A bird betrays her nest we trying to conceal it. When abstract nouns are personified, masculine gender is given to nouns denoting strength, strong feelings (anger, death, fear, war), feminine gender - to nouns associated with the idea of gentleness (beauty, peace, spring, kindness, dawn, etc). In English soldiers' and sailors' slang nouns denoting vessels and vehicles are referred to feminine gender affectionally: she is a good boat. The new ship has started on her maiden voyage.
Category of number
The category of number is expressed by the opposition of the plural form of the noun and to the singular form of the noun.
The category of case
Case is the immanent morphological category of the noun showing the relations of the object to other objects and phenomena.
Category of Animateness - Inanumateness
This lexico - grammatical category divides objects into animate and inanimate things - living beings and lifeless objects of nature, events, facts, properties, actions, etc
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