The subject of linguistic typology, branches

15. Typology of category of Gender

The basic cat. Every lang-s distinguishes btw. – males; - females

In Rus. gender is expressed morphologically that’s with the help of flexions. There are 3 genders in Rus.: - famine (with flexions а-я) ; - masculine; - neuter (flexions o-e).
genders correspond to nouns он, оно, она.
Classification on nouns into genders is deprive of any logics. Sometimes different nouns denoting the same objects belong to different genders. (девушка – das mädchen).
Nouns denoting the same things may belong to different genders. (береза, сосна, дуб).
The oldest way to express gender is with the help of words (lexical).
We have special words denoting males and females: husband, wife, man, woman.
In eng. gender is not expressed morphologically. Except some examples. waiter, waitress, actor, actress. In other cases it can be expressed lexically girl-friend, boyfriend, she cat, he cat.
Nouns denoting profession may be referred to men as well as to women, they may be of masculine or feminine gender depending on situation.
In both lang-s there are words which may denote either male or female: - человек – ребенок, мальчик – девочка.
There are words in both lang-s denoting domestic animals (hen – cock).
But in older practice they were not used except some special purposes. In Rus. gender may be indicated by special morphemes, nouns (тель – щик – чик ) musculine. Nouns ость- радость – feminine.


17. Typology of the category of case

More controversial, because the number of cases various from 2 to 15. In some lang-s there are no cases.

The number of cases depends on the number of factors.
In Rus. 6 cases and they show the relations btw case form in nominative and accusative in plural (дом’а – ‘дома)
In Eng. prepositions are used because there’s only one distinction btw. noun and possessive.
Every case form has its definite syntactical function. In Rus. only in nominative case are used in subjects. In Eng. nouns in possessive case have the function of attribute. Some grammarians consider that there are no case flexions at all.
Nouns in the possessive case in Eng. have the following characteristic features as nouns in nominative case may be used with articles
a puple’s book
the puple’s book
with adj. (a good pupil’s book)
with numeral (2 puples’ book)
But nouns with the possessive and nominative case have different functions. Nouns in genitive case may have ‘of’ (дом брата).
In Eng. nouns in the possessive case have: - property opposition (jone’s book), - private or social relations (jone’s wife), - the origin (the moon’s light), - relation btw a whole and a part (jone’s hand), - a characteristic feature of smth (mother’s care), - time distance relations.
Relations expressed by nouns in the possessive case may be expressed by a noun with prep ‘of’.
They are synonyms but difference is in style. Combinations with ‘of’ phrase are more official and may have some additional meanings: - a characteristic feature (a woman of a strong will), - material (a dress of wool), - a part of smth (crowd of people).
Posessive case in Eng. has 2 forms: dependant (tom’s falt), - absolute/ independent(Jone’s was a brilliant idea).
In Rus. dative case has the meaning of an action directed at an object. (купил детям).
Accusative case in Rus denotes a direct object (писал письмо).
Instrumental case denotes an instrument with the help of which is performed (писать карандашем). In Eng. preposition ‘by’ is used.
Prepositional case in Rus has meaning of space (собрались в аудитории).