Филологические науки / 4.Синтаксис: структура, семантика, функция.

Дем’янчук О.С.

Буковинський державний медичний університет

THE LINGUISTIC REPRESENTATION OF THE CATEGORY OF QUANTITY IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE

The category of number is universal and necessary in terms of understanding reality. Category of quantity can be observed in language at the morphemic, grammatical, lexical, phraseological and other levels.

On the surface of semantic relations, the meaning of the singular form will be understood as simply "one", opposed to this is the meaning of the plural form as "many" in the sense of "more than one". This is apparently obvious for such correlations as book – books, lake – lakes. We compared such forms as tear (one drop falling from the eye) and tears (many drops on the cheeks as tokens of grief or joy), potato (one item of the vegetables) and potatoes (food), paper (material) and papers (notes or documents), sky (the vault of heaven) and skies (the same sky taken as a direct or figurative background), etc. As a result of comparison we came to the conclusion that the broader semantic mark of the plural form or "plurality" in the grammatical sense, should be described as the potentially dismembering reflection of the structure of the referent, while the semantic mark of the singular will be understood as the non-dismembering reflection of the structure of the referent.

It is sometimes stated that the plural form indiscriminately presents both multiplicity of separate objects ("discrete" plural, e.g. three houses) and multiplicity of units of measure for an indivisible object ("plural of measure", e.g. three hours) . However, the difference is not in the content of the plural, but in the quality of the objects themselves. Actually, the singulars of the respective nouns differ from one another exactly on the same lines as the plurals do (one house – one hour).

On the other hand, there are semantic varieties of the plural forms that differ from each other in their plural quality. Some distinctions may be seen in a variety of other cases. For example, the plural form expresses a definite set of objects (eyes of the face, wheels of the vehicle, etc.), various types of the referent (wines, tees, steels), intensity of the presentation of the idea (years and years, thousands upon thousands), picturesqueness (sands, waters, snows). The extreme point of this semantic scale is marked by the words of the plural form, for example, by means of rendering not specificational, but purely notional difference in meaning. For example: colours as a "flag", attentions as "wooing", pains as "effort", quarters as "abode", etc.

The scope of the semantic differences of the plural forms may pose before the observer and there is a question whether the category of number is a variable grammatical category.

The answer to the question, though, doesn't leave any uncertainty: the category of number is one of the regular variable categories in the grammatical system of the English language. The variability of the category is simply given in its form, for example, in the forms of the bulk of English nouns which do distinguish it by means of the described binary paradigm. As for the differences in meaning, it begins with the interaction between the underlying oppositional semantic marks of the category and the more concrete lexical differences in the semantics of individual words.

It is known that the opposition inside numerals has the division "one – many", where many as the strong member includes its detailing reproducers (from two till twelve). Each of the units being a sign of counting is at the same time the unit of vocabulary (like table, go, black). But as the representative of the associative stratum (and not the concretizing one) it can't correlate our perception with any concrete object of reality. As it has been already stated above it fixes the quantitative ties existing in between any static denotates from the point of view of their summing repeating. In this respect any numeral (from two till twelve) is not a categorial and contradicting form but a parallel one which serves to represent the generalized meaning of plurality. Rendering it each of them is its concretizer, (two – plurality, five – plurality, ten - plurality, etc.) But within this meaning they act as individual representatives not equal to each other (two in its concrete individual meaning differs from all the rest).

From this individual detailing point of view numerals have much in common with the onomastic units (like Ann, Peter, etc.) which not only reproduce the meaning 'man' equally opposing the gender reference but serve to reveal the concrete detailing of the person.

The meaning of plurality being abstract requires its concrete representation by far in the more detailing way than the meaning of singularity. It is quite explicable therefore why it is just plurality that has such a manifold net of its indicators in English. In the sphere of numerals there are eleven language units; in the sphere of quantifiers there are also approximately the same number (some, several, few, a few, little, a little, many, much, lots, a lot, plenty, all, and two, three, four, five ... till twelve).

Here we have a picture which deserves to be discussed. Within the system of morphemes and numerals there is the differentiation of the kind "singularity – plurality" where plurality as the strong member is represented by a vast majority of language forms (the morphemes like -s, -en, -a; the root mutation like feet, etc.). It is a remarkable fact that within the sphere of quantifiers there are no forms representing singularity. The opposition has a kind of "plurality – totalness" where plurality is a strong member of this opposition too being represented by eleven units while the totalness as a weak member of this opposition is represented by one unit only.

The question arises whether such an unequal opposition is legitimate. It is necessary to keep in mind that plurality singles out singularity of the kind a few, a lot of, etc. This kind of singularity however is of the secondary origin (just like in the nouns of the kind cattle, crew, snow, milk, etc. which come so near to plurality that there occurs the breaking of the subject-predicate agreement).

In the analyzed example the picture is nearly the same. For example A few books are seen there where the indefinite article does not prevent from the plural form that follows in the noun and verb. Let's turn to the numeral opposition.

This opposition is treated as perfectly legitimate but it represents the mirror reflection of the one existing in quantifiers. Their parallelism helps to treat quantifiers as a kind of indefinite numerals which create the natural balance of quantity. In all the language classes it is plurality which being the strong member is realized many-sided. Thus the general line on quantitative revealing includes two polar centres: "nothing – everything" and two intermediate: "singularity – plurality". The two latter create the category of number directly.

In English, quantity can be expressed through some structural parts of speech, namely, functional words.

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