Category of number of the English language

In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one", "two", or "three or more").^[1] In many languages, including English, the number categories are singular and plural. Some languages also have a dual number or other arrangements.

The count distinctions typically, but not always, correspond to the actual count of the referents of the marked noun or pronoun.

The word "number" is also used in linguistics to describe the distinction between certain grammatical aspects that indicate the number of times an event occurs, such as the semelfactive aspect, the iterative aspect, etc. For that use of the term, see "Grammatical aspect"

 

Overview

Most languages of the world have formal means to express differences of number. One widespread distinction, found in English and many other languages, involves a simple two-way number contrast between singular and plural (car / cars, child / children, etc.). Discussion of other more elaborate systems of number appears 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". In the second sentence, all this information is 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 unique number class (nouns are partitioned into disjoint classes by number).
2. Noun modifiers (such as adjectives) and verbs may also have different forms for each number class and be inflected to match the number of the nouns to which they refer (number is an agreement category).

This is partly the case in English: every noun is either singular or plural (a few forms, 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 to which they refer: "this car" and "these cars" are correct, while "*this cars" or "*these car" are ungrammatical and, therefore, incorrect. However adjectives are not inflected, and most verb forms do not distinguish between singular and plural. Only count nouns can be freely used in the singular and in the plural. Mass nouns, like "milk", "silverware", and "wisdom", are normally used in only the singular form.^[2] (In some cases, a normally mass noun X may be used as a count noun to collect several distinct kinds of X into an enumerable group; for example, a cheesemaker might speak of goat, sheep, and cow milk as milks.) 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 either directly, with numerals, or indirectly, through optional quantifiers. However, many of these languages compensate^{[ clarification needed ]} 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 (indicating the number 3) unless

Types of number

Singular versus plural

Main article: Plural

In most languages with grammatical number, nouns, and sometimes other parts of speech, have two forms, the singular, for one instance of a concept, and the plural, for more than one instance. Usually, the singular is the unmarked form of a word, and the plural is obtained by inflecting the singular. This is the case in English: car/cars, box/boxes, man/men. There may be exceptional nouns whose plural is identical to the singular: one sheep/two sheep.

Singulative versus collective

Main article: Singulative number

Some languages differentiate between an unmarked form, the collective, which is indifferent in respect to number, and a marked form for single entities, called the singulative in this context. For example, in Welsh, moch ("pigs") is a basic form, whereas a suffix is added to form mochyn ("pig"). It is the collective form which is more basic, and it is used as an adjectival modifier, e.g. cig moch ("pig meat", "pork"). The collective form is therefore similar in many respects to an English mass noun like "rice", which in fact refers to a collection of items which are logically countable. However, English has no productive process of forming singulative nouns (just phrases such as "a grain of rice"). Therefore, English cannot be said to have a singulative number.

In other languages, singulatives can be regularly formed from collective nouns; e.g. Standard Arabic حجر ḥajar "stone" → حجرة ḥajara "(individual) stone", بقر baqar "cattle" → بقرة baqara "(single) cow". In Russian, the suffix for forming singulative form is -ин- -in-; e.g. град grad "hail" → градина gradina "hailstone", лёд lyod "ice" → льдина l'dina "block of ice". In both Russian and Arabic, the singulative form always takes on the feminine gender. In Dutch, singulative forms of collective nouns are occasionally made by diminutives: snoep "sweets, candy" → snoepje "sweet, piece of candy". These singulatives can be pluralised like most other nouns: snoepjes "several sweets, pieces of candy".

Dual

Main article: Dual (grammatical number)

The distinction between a "singular" number (one) and a "plural" number (more than one) found in English is not the only possible classification. Another one is "singular" (one), "dual" (two) and "plural" (more than two). Dual number existed in Proto-Indo-European, persisted in many ancient Indo-European languages that descended from it—Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, Gothic, Old Norse, and Old English for example—and can still be found in a few modern Indo-European languages such as Slovene.^[7] Many more modern Indo-European languages show residual traces of the dual, as in the English distinctions both vs. all, either vs. any, neither vs. none, and so on. (Note, however, that Norwegian både, for example, though cognate with English both, can be used with more than two things, as in X sparer både tid, penger, og arbeid, literally "X saves both time, money, and labour".)

Many Semitic languages also have dual number. For instance, in Arabic all nouns can have singular, plural, or dual forms. For non-broken plurals, masculine plural nouns end with ون -ūn and feminine plural nouns end with ات -āt, whilst ان -ān, is added to the end of a noun to indicate that it is dual (even among nouns that have broken plurals).

Pronouns in Polynesian languages such as Tahitian exhibit the singular, dual, and plural numbers.

Trial

The trial number is a grammatical number referring to 'three items', in contrast to 'singular' (one item), 'dual' (two items), and 'plural' (four or more items). Several Austronesian languages such as Tolomako, Lihir, and Manam; the Kiwaian languages; and the Austronesian-influenced creole languages Bislama and Tok Pisin have the trial number in their pronouns. No language is known with trial number in its nouns.^{[ citation needed ]}

Quadral

The quadral number, if it existed, would denote four items together, as trial does three. No known natural language has it, nor is there any proof that any natural language ever did. It was once thought to exist in the pronoun systems of Marshallese, spoken in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean,^[8] and in Sursurunga,^[9] in Tangga,^[10][11] and in several other Austronesian languages. While not all of these languages are adequately attested, it turns out that Sursurunga instead has both a "lesser paucal" (labeled "trial", but in fact referring to small groups, with typically three or four members) and a "greater paucal" (misnamed the "quadral", as it has a minimum of four, e.g. a pair of dyadic kin terms)—the distinction is along the lines of "a few" vs. "several";—and that what Marshallese actually has is a trial and a paucal.^[12] None of them has a "quadral"; in at least two cases the field workers who originally suggested they did have a "quadral" were also the first to publish a peer-reviewed article contradicting that suggestion.

Paucal

Paucal number, for a few (as opposed to many) instances of the referent (e.g. in Hopi, Warlpiri, some Oceanic languages,^[13] Motuna,^[14] Serbo-Croatian,^[15] and in Arabic for some nouns). Paucal number has also been documented in some Cushitic languages of Ethiopia, including Baiso, which marks singular, paucal, plural.^[16] When paucal number is used in Arabic, it generally refers to ten or fewer instances.

Of the Indo-European languages, Northern Kurdish or Kurmanji is one of the few known languages with paucal number. For instance: "car-IN-an" (sometimes), cf. "gelek car-an" (many times). In Russian, a form similar to genitive singular (the remnants of the dual number^{[ citation needed ]}) is also applied to three or four items (2, 3 or 4 kamn'a – stones, but 5 or eight kamney (genitive plural)), making it effectively paucal. Italian language, although among Romance languages, has a similar pattern, using prepositions "di" + article, named "articolo partitivo" (partitive article).

Distributive plural

Distributive plural number, for many instances viewed as independent individuals (for example, in Navajo).

having a dual, and no language has dual without a plural.

Parts of speech. The noun

Parts of Speech
Chapter 2 - Nouns

A noun is often defined as a word which names a person, place or thing. Here are some examples of nouns: boy, river, friend, Mexico, triangle, day, school, truth, university, idea, John F. Kennedy, movie, aunt, vacation, eye, dream, flag, teacher, class, grammar. John F. Kennedy is a noun because it is the name of a person; Mexico is a noun because it is the name of a place; and boy is a noun because it is the name of a thing.

Some grammar books divide nouns into 2 groups - proper nouns and common nouns. Proper nouns are nouns which begin with a capital letter because it is the name of a specific or particular person place or thing. Some examples of proper nouns are: Mexico, John F. Kennedy, Atlantic Ocean, February, Monday, New York City, Susan, Maple Street, Burger King. If you see a word beginning with a capital letter in in the middle of a sentence, it is probably a proper noun. Most nouns are common nouns and do not begin with a capital letter.

Many nouns have a special plural form if there is more than one. For example, we say one book but two books. Plurals are usually formed by adding an -s (book s) or -es (box es) but some plurals are formed in different ways (child - children, person - people, mouse - mice, sheep - sheep).