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In linguistics, the term grammatical number refers to ways of expressing Quantity by Inflecting words. In the English sentences below, the number of apples is indicated in three different ways: : ''That fresh apple is on the table.'' : ''Those fresh apples are on the table.'' On one hand, the Noun "apple" appears in its singular form in the first sentence, and in its ''' Plural ''' form in the second sentence. On the other hand, the Verb "to be" and the Demonstrative Pronoun "that" also have different forms according to the quantity of apples. More generally, some Parts Of Speech that refer to a noun are inflected to reflect the quantity denoted by the noun. This is called '''number Agreement '''. Not all languages express quantity through inflection. In the following two examples, no words are inflected for number: : ''There is one fresh apple on the table.'' : ''There is more than one fresh apple on the table.'' Instead, quantity is shown by independent particles with a specifically quantitative meaning ("one" and "more than one"). Some languages only allow this kind of construction.; they can still express quantities, but they lack grammatical number. Many of these, such as Mandarin , are Analytic Languages . In languages without inflectional noun classes, quantities may still be expressed through independent particles called Measure Word s. The term ''number'' is also used to describe the distinction between certain Grammatical Aspect s that indicate the number of times an event occurs (e.g. Semelfactive Aspect , Iterative Aspect , etc.). For that use, see '' Grammatical Aspect ''. Semantic vs. grammatical number All languages are able to specify the quantity of referents. They may do so by Lexical means with words such as English ''a few'', ''some'', ''one'', ''two'', ''five hundred''. However, not every language has a grammatical category of number. Grammatical number is expressed by Morphological and/or Syntactic means. That is, it is indicated by certain grammatical elements, such as through Affix es or number words. Grammatical number may be thought of as the indication of Semantic number through Grammar . Languages that express quantity only by lexical means lack a grammatical category of number. For instance, in Khmer , neither nouns nor verbs carry any grammatical information concerning number: such information can only be conveyed by lexical items such as ''khlah'' 'some', ''pii-bey'' 'a few', and so on.. 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. Types of 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 Ancient Greek , and it is often found in Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic Languages . Number classes in language include:
Many currently spoken languages, and nearly all modern Indo-European languages, use only plural and singular number. There is a hierarchy among the categories of number: No language distinguishes a trial unless having a dual, and no language has dual without a plural (Greenberg 1972). Some languages differentiate between a basic form (collective) which is indifferent in respect to number, and a more complicated derived form for single entities ( Singulative ). Number agreement In many languages, verbs are Conjugated for number. Using French as an example, one says ''je vois'' (I see), but ''nous voyons'' (we see). The verb ''voir'' (to see) changes from ''vois'' in the first person singular to ''voyons'' in the plural. In everyday English, this often happens in the third person (she runs, they run), but not in other Grammatical Person s, with the exception of the verb ''to be''. Adjectives often agree with the number of the noun they modify. For example, in French , one says ''un vieil arbre'' (an old tree), but ''des vieux arbres'' (some old trees). The singular adjective ''vieil'' (old) becomes ''vieux'' in the plural (unlike English ''old'', which remains unchanged). Other Determiner s may agree with number. In English, the Demonstrative s ''this, that'' change to ''these, those'' in the plural, and the Indefinite Article ''a, an'' is omitted or changed to ''some''. In French and German, the Definite Article s have gender distinctions in the singular but not the plural. In Spanish and Portuguese, all articles are inflected for gender and number (e.g. Spanish ''un, una, unos, unas''). Sometimes, grammatical number will not represent the actual quantity. For example, in Ancient Greek and Sanskrit Neuter plurals took a singular verb. The plural may be applied to a single individual as a sign of importance or reverence, as in the ''pluralis Majestatis'' , or, in English, when using the Singular "they" for Gender-neutrality . Although many languages treat Collective Nouns as singular, others interpret them as plural, as in the British English phrase ''the committee are meeting'' (agreement ''in sensu''); the use of this type of construction varies with dialect and level of formality. Obligatority of number marking In many languages, such as English, number is obligatorily expressed in every grammatical context; in other languages, however, number expression is limited to certain classes of nouns, such as animates (as with the suffix -men in Mandarin) or referentially prominent nouns (as with proximate forms in most Algonquian languages, opposed to referentially less prominent obviative forms). A very common situation is that plural number is not marked if there is any other overt indication of number (as for example in Hungarian : ''virág'' "flower"; ''virágok'' "flowers"; ''hat virág'' "six flowers"). Formal expression of number Synthetic languages typically distinguish grammatical number by Inflection . (Note that Analytic Language s, such as Chinese , don't have grammatical number.) Below are some examples of number Affix es for nouns (where the inflecting Morpheme is underlined):
Plurality is sometimes marked by a specialized ''number particle'' (or ''number word''). This is frequent in Australian and , certain nouns optionally denote plurality by secondary stress ''ing laláki'' (man/singular) & ''ing babái'' (woman/singular) become ''ding láláki'' (man/plural) & ''ding bábái'' (woman/plural). In most languages, the singular is formally unmarked, whereas the plural is marked in some way. Some languages (typically the Bantu languages) mark both the singular and the plural, for instance Swahili (see example above). The third logical possibility, rarely found in languages, is unmarked plural contrasting with marked singular. An alleged example of this situation is Desano , a Tucanoan language of Colombia. Cf. ''gasi'' "canoes" vs. ''gasiru'' "canoe"; ''yukü'' "trees" vs. ''yukügü'' "tree". Elements marking number may appear on nouns and Pronoun s in Dependent-marking Language s or on Verb s and Adjectives in Head-marking Language s. In the English sentence above, the plural suffix ''-s'' is added to the noun ''cowboy''. In the Western Apache (a head-marking language) equivalent, a plural prefix ''da-'' is added to the verb ''yiłch’ígó’aah'' "he is teaching him" (resulting in ''yiłch’ídagó’aah'' "he is teaching them") while noun ''idilohí'' "cowboy" is unmarked for number. Additionally, number-marking may also occur via morphological Agreement where the number must be marked similarly in all words referring to the same object. For example, in Finnish, we have ''Yöt o'''vat''' pime'''i'''tä'' "nights are dark" ("night-PL is-PL dark-PL- Partitive "), where each word referring to the parent noun (''yö'' "night") must be pluralized (PL), because the parent noun is pluralized (''yöt'' "nights"). This can produce grammatical controversies with the T-V Distinction , where the addressee is pluralized to show politeness. Inverse number The languages of the Kiowa-Tanoan family have three numbers — singular, dual, and plural — and exhibit an unusual system, called ''inverse number'' (or ''number toggling''), of marking number. In this scheme, every Countable Noun has what might be called its "inherent" or "expected" numbers, and is unmarked for these numbers. When a noun appears in an ''inverse'' ("unexpected") number, it is inflected to mark this. For example, in Jemez , where nouns take the ending ''-sh'' to denote an inverse number, there are four Noun Class es, as follows: As can be seen, class-I nouns are inherently singular, class-II nouns are inherently plural, class-III nouns are inherently singular or plural. Class-IV nouns cannot be counted and are never marked with ''-sh''. From (Sprott 1992, p. 53) A similar system is observed in Kiowa (Kiowa is distantly related to Tanoan languages like Jemez): Number in specific languages Indo-European English English is typical of languages that have only singular and plural number. English does not distinguish among dual, trial, or paucal number. The plural form of a word is usually created by adding the suffix ''-s''. Pronouns are irregular precisely because they are so common, such as the singular ''I'' and the plural ''we''. See English Plural for detail. Slovene Slovene , a Slavic Language , is more complicated:
French In its written form, French , a Romance Language , declines nouns for number (singular or plural). In terms of pronunciation, however, the majority of nouns (and adjectives) are not actually declined for number. This is because the ''-s'' Suffix , which typically marks plural nouns and adjectives, is normally silent (but see Liaison for an exception), and thus does not really change anything; the plural article or determiner is the real indicator of plurality. However, plural number still exists in French because some irregular plurals do differ from the singular in pronunciation; for example, ''cheval'' ("horse") is pronounced , while ''chevaux'' ("horses") is pronounced . Afro-Asiatic Hebrew In Hebrew , a Semitic Language , most nouns have only singular and plural forms, such as ''sefer/sfarim'' ("book/books"), but some have singular, dual, and plural forms, such as ''yom/yomaim/yamim'' ("day/two days/days"). Some words occur so often in pairs that what used to be the dual form is now the general plural, such as ''ayin/eynayim'' ("eye/eyes," used even in a sentence like, "The spider has eight eyes."). Adjectives, verbs, and pronouns have only singular and plural, with the plural forms of these being used with dual nouns. See also
Bibliography
Notes # Note|Khmer-number-modifiers}} See, for example, the ''Linguistic sketch'' in '' Khmer '' article at UCLA Language Materials project . |