GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES

Oleh Miftahul Chaer (20401107107)
A grammatical category is a semantic distinction which is reflected in a morphological paradigm. Grammatical categories can have one or more exponents. There are some familiar grammatical categories-gender, number and person. For English has, strictly, no grammatical gender at all. It has, of course, the pronouns he, she, and it, but these are essentially markers of sex. The first two, he and she, are used if the sex is specifically indicate or known; otherwise it is used. There is, however, one qualification. There is a difference between the use of the pronoun for animals and for human. It maybe used for animals, e.g. to refer to a dog, and so may he or she if the sex is known. However, with humans it can not be used, even if the sex is unknown. For the indefinite unknown human the forms they, them, there are used in colloquial English (even for singular) as in has anyone lost their hat ? if anyone comes tell them to go away. This is frowned on by some grammarians, but seems to me to be a useful and whole acceptable device for avoiding the indication of sex. For reference to a specific human whose sex is unknown, e.g. a baby, it is sometimes used but it is probably wiser to ask the mother first ‘is it a boy or a girl?’

Many languages have noun classes that function grammatically like the gender classes of the Indo-European and Semitic languages. Grammatical genders are classes of nouns reflected in the behavior of associated words; every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be very few which belong to several classes at once. If a language distinguishes between masculine and feminine gender, for instance, then each noun belongs to one of those two genders; in order to correctly decline any noun and any modifier or other type of word affecting that noun, one must identify whether the noun is feminine or masculine. The term "grammatical gender" is mostly used for Indo-European languages, many of which follow the pattern just described. While Old English (Anglo-Saxon) had grammatical gender, Modern English is normally described as lacking grammatical gender.

The linguistic notion of grammatical gender is distinguished from the biological and social notion of natural gender, although they interact closely in many languages. Both grammatical and natural gender can have linguistic effects in a given language. Although some authors use the term "noun class" as a synonym or an extension of "grammatical gender", for others they are separate concepts. One can in fact say that grammatical gender is a type of noun class.

Grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one" or "more than one"). Most languages of the world have formal means to express differences of number. The most widespread distinction, as found in English and many other languages, involves a simple two-way number contrast between singular and plural (car / cars; child / children, etc.). Other more elaborate systems of number are described below.

Grammatical number is a morphological category characterized by the expression of quantity through inflection or agreement. As an example, consider the English sentences below:

That apple on the table is fresh.

Those two apples on the table are fresh.

The number of apples is marked on the noun — "apple", singular number (one item) vs. "apples", plural number (more than one item) —, on the demonstrative, "that/those", and on the verb, "is/are". Note that, especially in the second sentence, this information can be considered redundant, since quantity is already indicated by the numeral "two"..

A language has grammatical number when its nouns are subdivided into morphological classes according to the quantity they express, such that:

1. Every noun belongs to a single number class. (Number partitions nouns into disjoint classes.)
2. Noun modifiers (such as adjectives) and verbs have different forms for each number class, and must be inflected to match the number of the nouns they refer to. (Number is an agreement category.)

This is the case in English: every noun is either singular or plural (a few, such as "fish", can be either, according to context), and at least some modifiers of nouns — namely the demonstratives, the personal pronouns, the articles, and verbs — are inflected to agree with the number of the nouns they refer to: "this car" and "these cars" are correct, while "*this cars" or "*these car" are ungrammatical. Only count nouns can be freely used in the singular and in the plural. Mass nouns, like "wine", "silverware" and "wisdom", are normally used only in the singular ([2]). Many languages distinguish between count nouns and mass nouns.

Not all languages have number as a grammatical category. In those that do not, quantity must be expressed directly, with numerals, or indirectly, through optional quantifiers. However, many of these languages compensate for the lack of grammatical number with an extensive system of measure words.

There is a hierarchy among number categories: No language distinguishes a trial unless having a dual, and no language has dual without a plural.

Grammatical person is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns. It also frequently affects verbs, sometimes nouns, and possessive relationships as well.

English distinguishes three grammatical persons: The personal pronouns I (singular) and we (plural) are in the first person. The personal pronoun you is the second person. It refers to the addressee. You are used in both the singular and plural; thou is the archaic informal second-person singular pronoun.

Any person, place, or thing other than the speaker and the addressee is referred to in the third person. When referring to oneself in the third person, it is ileums.. See English personal pronouns, and the following articles on specific grammatical persons, or their corresponding personal pronouns:

Pronoun


Person/plurality


Gender

Standard

I


First person singular


-

You


Second person singular/plural


-

He


Third person singular, masculine / gender-neutral third person singular


masculine

She


Third person singular, feminine


feminine

It


Third person singular, neuter


neuter

We


First person plural


-

They


Third person plural/gender-neutral third person singular (correctness of this usage disputed)


-

Colloquial

Youse


Second person plural, dialect


-

Yinz


Second person plural, dialect


-

Ye


Second person plural, dialectal Hiberno-English


-

Archaic

Thou


Second person singular, archaic


-

There are other forms with deictic functions. The definite article the is used to refer to single identifiable item in the context, where it is apparent to speaker and hearer precisely what that item is. Because of its function the article does not normally occur with names (proper nouns). A proper noun such as Fred, professor Brown,etc., is used simply to identify a particular person, and the article would thus be redundant (though it is used, redundantly, in some languages, e.g. Italian).