 Hello. Welcome back. In this second of two e-lectures about head nouns, we will look at the grammatical features associated with these head nouns. And these grammatical features are number, gender and case. And in present day English, these features are realized by means of these morphological operations. For example, affixation as in tables, oxen or thieves, base change in examples such as feet or men. And finally we have zero change operations where nothing happens. For example, take the plural of sheep which is sheep or the plural of fish which is identical with the singular form. The collection of these inflectional processes for nouns is traditionally referred to as declension. Now let's look at number first. In English there are two categories of number. The singular which normally denotes one, one of anything. And the plural which means more than one. Depending on their class membership, nouns can be assigned to different classes. To invariable and variable number classes where the invariable number class in turn can consist of singular invariable nouns and plural invariable nouns. Let us look at the invariable class first. Now in the singular, invariable nouns that is nouns that have no plural form unless they are post-modified include so-called non-count nouns. We discussed them in the e-lecture head nouns part one. Non-count nouns such as water, gold or peace. And they are singular invariable they have no plural. Then we have most proper nouns for example nouns such as well Henry, The New York Times, London. Again unless they are post-modified they have no plural and the same applies to nouns generated from adjectives by means of conversion. Our third group the de-adjectival heads which you can find in items such as the unreal or the impossible. To name just two of them. Interestingly some nouns ending in S especially diseases such as the measles or the sniffles etc. And other variable nouns ending in S and in X well let's take linguistics. They are singular. This can be shown if they occur as subjects and have to agree with their verb in number. Let's look at some examples. Measles is an infection. So here we have a singular verb is an infection. What's the news in S ending but singular noun and of course linguistics which has to agree with the singular verb form of B is a number. So linguistics is an invariable singular form. Some of these nouns however can be singular or plural in particular when they denote both one's knowledge of the subject and the practical application of results. Here is an example. Politics is the art of whatever. So this then means the science of government politics. And on the other hand we have an example like his politics are conservative in this case politics is plural and it means political views. Let's now look at the invariable plural. Nouns occurring only in the plural include for example summation plurals such as how much are those binoculars. Pluralia tantum nouns that only occur in the plural. All my thanks are due to you. There is no such thing as a thank unmarked plural nouns how many people are there. And personal de-adjectival nouns so poor is originally an adjective but in the poor are causing trouble. It is a noun in its invariable plural form. Finally we have the group of variable nouns which may have two number forms the singular and the plural. Depending on the morphological operation involved and the way the plural formation is conditioned we can define several subclasses. The first is often referred to as regular plural formation. Now nouns which are formed according to this regular plural formation paradigm involve an operation of affixation which is phonologically conditioned. For a detailed explanation of the analysis of the plural in present day English I recommend to look at my screencast morphology morphological analysis present day English in this channel. Well let's look at the rules which determine what type of plural affix has to be chosen. Here it is. Now the first part of the rule means add is to a base form. If the plural ends in a so-called sibilant that is an alveolar post alveolar fricative as in and here is one example horses. The second part of the rule means add that is the voiced alveolar fricative. If the singular ends with a vowel or a voiced consonant other than a sibilant an example is dogs. And the plural in cats is determined by the rule that you add a sir. If the singular ends with a voiceless consonant other than a sibilant. Alright now nouns whose plural is conditioned morphologically or lexically involve what is often referred to as irregular plural formation. And here we can define several subclasses for example we have plural formation by means of a base change. Which in most cases is lexically conditioned that is we have to remember the particular base forms and morphologically conditioned. It only applies in particular morphological context that is in our case only in the plural. And examples are man men and foot feet. Please notice that the genitive is fully regular it is phonologically conditioned man's and foot's. Well and then we have plural formation by means of a base change plus affixation where you have to remember the base forms but also have to remember that you only apply the operation in particular morphological context. So again we have a combination of morphological and lexical conditioning. Here are some examples. Life, thief, cloth and chief the base forms and then we have the genitive which is fully regular and fully phonologically conditioned. The operation is affixation life's, thief's, cloths and chiefs. In the plural however we have three examples where a base change plus affixation applies lies, thieves and clothes. And one example which is fully regular namely chiefs. Furthermore there are nouns that do not involve any formal singular and plural distinction. For example zero plurals, I already mentioned them earlier on, sheep, cod and fish are three examples. And then English has adopted a number of foreign plural from Latin, stimulus, stimuli, corpus corpora and from Greek criterion criteria index indices and many more. Well at last but not least there are still some forms that involve EN affixation. Famous examples ox oxen, child children, brother brethren would be another example. So these examples are then again lexically and morphologically conditioned. Oxes is the genitive singular and childs is the genitive singular both are fully regular. So much for number that has now turned our attention to gender. In present day English gender is a grammatical classification of nouns, pronouns or other words in the noun phrase according to a distinction related to the sex of the referent. The relative and the personal pronouns enable us to differentiate two broad gender classes. One is referred to as personal gender, the relative pronoun which can be used in this context is who, the personal pronouns he, his, she, her and this personal gender largely applies to animate nouns. The second type of gender is the non-personal gender with the relative pronoun which and the personal pronoun it and it's. Let us illustrate this using the compound noun schoolboy versus boy school. Now here we have the example schoolboy with boy as the head. Well and this is certainly a boy, this is the boy who likes his school, the relative pronoun who and the personal pronoun his indicates that this is an item of personal gender. Well and boy school is non-personal, boy school here, school is the head. It is non-personal because the relative pronoun is now which and the personal pronoun is it or it's. Depending on their use special genders can be assigned to countries and vehicles. For example England is proud of her queen indicates that England is personal to some extent. It is even feminine and the ship was launched five years ago. She sailed around the world is also personal and feminine. So these are special cases of gender. Let's look at case next. English nouns can be declined for two cases. The standard one is the unmarked or common case. That is standard forms of nouns in their singular and plural form. So boy is a noun in its singular form, boys is a noun in its plural form. Both belong to the category of common case. The second case is the genitive case whose ending is always spelled with an apostrophe. The apostrophe occurs after the stem in the genitive singular form and after the plural affix in the plural form. Note that my transliteration here noun singular gen noun plural gen. My transliteration here is based on orthography rather than on phonology. A slightly more complex case system can be defined for pronouns. Where a distinction can be drawn between the subjective and objective case as in I ran we ran or I saw me I saw us. And the genitive case in the determinative form my and our as determiners. And the genitive in the independent form the book is mine the book the books are ours. It is arguable whether the common genitive distinction should be maintained for present day English. Even though the genitive may be seen as a relict of a historical much more complex case system. There are many aspects connected with the genitive case that have no longer straightforward syntactic status. For example the semantic interpretation associated with the genitive and the formal differences between the S genitive and the of genitive. An alternative view would define English as a language without case distinctions at all and with a special form used to express possessive partitive etc. relations. So let us look at the genitive from this point of view in more detail. Formerly there are two types of genitive. The S genitive I already mentioned it earlier on which is mainly used with animate gender having personal reference so personal gender form. And the periphrastic or of genitive which is mainly used with inanimate gender nouns. In some cases both genitive forms are acceptable for example when the end focus is of importance as in the islands inhabitants where there is a clear cut focus on inhabitants versus the inhabitant of the island with a focus on island. However there are some exceptions for example we have nouns such as China which are used with the S genitive nouns which are called collective nouns and have personal and gender characteristics. The central but not the only use of the genitive is to express possession. However the term possessive does not adequately apply to all uses. There are more genitive meanings and here are some of them. For example the possessive form as in my husband's mother which means my husband has a mother my mother and my husband possesses a mother. The subjective form her parents consent well her parents consented something or the objective meaning the prisoners release means really that someone released the prisoner. Or the meaning of an origin the boy's story means that the story comes from the boy the boy told a story. Or take the descriptive meaning a summer's day which really means a day in the summer. And finally the partitive meaning it's a has a relationship the earth has a surface is expressed by the S genitive the earth's surface. Now depending on the role on its role within a noun phrase the genitive can be assigned different functions. For example the determining function John's new briefcase where John's is equivalent to a standard determiner such as his new briefcase. Or the modifying function a women's university is really a university for women. Or let's take the third function the University of Marburg's president well the University of Marburg is a group so here we have a group genitive. In our fourth fourth example Linda's comments are like Jane's well Jane's is independent however it refers to comments too. And in our fifth example at builds we really mean the location at builds place it's a local function. And finally we have the post genitive function Peter's daughter versus a daughter of Peters. Well so much for the notion of case and the other grammatical features associated with present day English head nouns. We saw that despite its rudimentary system of declension such as number gender in case where in each notion we have two realizations the singular and the plural as number variance. Plus personal and minus personal gender and the common versus the genitive case. So despite this relatively slimline system present day English is still relatively complex this complexity however is more evident in the semantic interpretation of these categories rather. Than in their formal realization well so much for the grammatical and semantic properties of head nouns in present day English. I hope that the discussion of these notions has been of some help for you. So thanks for your attention and see you again.