Grammatical number

Number, in linguistics, is a grammatical category used to express the quantity of objects referred to by a noun.

According to this definition, noun is inherently expressed in nouns and pronouns, and secondarily, via agreement, in adjectives and verbs.

The term number is also used to describe the distinction between certain grammatical aspects that indicate the number of times an event occurs (e.g. semelfactive aspect, iterative aspect, etc.). For that use, see Grammatical aspect.

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.

That said, there are some languages that express quantity only by lexical means, in such a way that we can say that they lack a 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.

Types of number

As we have seen, in many languages number is limited to two categories: singular number, distinguishing between one referent and plural number, distinguishing more than one referent. However, other instances of number exist, including:

• nullar number, for zero instances of the referent (e.g. in Latvian)
• dual number, for two instances of the referent (e.g. in Arabic, Slovenian, Ancient Greek and others)
• trial number, for three instances of the referent (e.g. in some Australian and Austronesian languages including Tolomako)
• paucal number, for a few (as opposed to many) instances of the referent (e.g. in Hopi, Warlpiri and in Arabic for some nouns)
• collective number, for many referents viewed as a single collection (e.g. in Breton, Japanese and others)
• distributive plural number, for many instances viewed as independent individuals (e.g. in Navajo)

Many currently spoken languages, and nearly all modern Indo-European languages, use only plural and singular number. Some languages, particularly analytic languages, completely lack instances of grammatical number (e.g. Mandarin)

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). For example, in Tlingit (a Native-American language spoken in Alaska), the plural of tɬingit ("man") is tɬingitq, which really refers to a unitary group of men, not to a random unconnected group of men. Similarly, the plural of q'aat ("island"), which is q'aat'q'i, really means something like "archipelago".

Expression of number

Synthetic languages typically distinguish grammatical number by inflection; in contrast, Analytic languages such as Chinese don't indicate number morphologically, but use contexts and quantifiers. Below are some examples of number affixes for nouns (where the inflecting morpheme is underlined):

• suffixes
  • English: cat (singular) ~ cats (plural) ; also ox ~ oxen
  • French: chat ("cat"/singular) ~ chats ("cat"/plural) (but see comment below)
  • Japanese: 私 watashi ("I"/general) ~ 私たち watashitachi ("I"/collective)
  • Slovenian: lipa ("tree"/singular) ~ lipi ("tree/dual) ~ lipe ("tree/plural)
  • Turkish: adam ("man"/singular) ~ adamlar ("man"/plural),
• prefixes
  • Swahili: mtoto ("child"/singular) ~ watoto ("child"/plural) (prefixes are also common in other Bantu languages)
• simulfixes
  • Arabic: كِتَاب kitāb ("book"/singular) ~ كُتُب kutub ("book"/plural)
  • English: man (singular) ~ men (plural) ; also goose ~ geese
  • German: Vater ("father"/singular) ~ Väter ("father"/plural)
• reduplication (partial or full) :
  • Indonesian: orang (person/singular) ~ orang-orang (person/plural)
  • Japanese: 人 hito (person/general) ~ 人人 hito-bito (person/collective)
  • Somali: buug (book/singular) ~ buug-ag (book/plural)
  • Ilokano: ti balay (house/singular) ~ dagiti balbalay' (house/plural)

Plurality is sometimes marked by a specialized particle. This is frequent in Australian and Austronesian languages, such as Tagalog mga: bahay "house"; mga bahay "houses"). In Kapampangan, 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 same 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".

Many languages employ number agreement, where the number must be marked similarly in all words referring to the same object. For example, in Finnish, we have Yöt ovat pimeitä "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.

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").

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:

• babarija (old wives tale) (singular), babariji (two old wives tales) (dual), babarije (three old wives tales), baberij (five or more old wives tales)
• hiša (house) (singular), hiši (two houses) (dual), tri hiše (three houses) (plural), šest hiš (six houses) (plural)
• miš (mouse) (singular), miši (two or three mice) (dual := plural)
• jaz (I) (singular), midva/midve (we) (dual + [Masculine/Feminine gender]), mi/me (we) (plural [Ma/Fe gender])
• vrata (one door) (singular), dvoje vrat (two doors) (dual), tri vrata (three doors) (plural), [plural noun with different or same form]
• babine (afterbirth period) (archaic meaning) (singular), babini (two afterbirth periods) (dual), babine (three afterbirth periods), [plural noun with different or same form]
• človeštvo (mankind) (singular), človeštvi (two mankind) (dual), človeštva (three mankind), [collective noun with different form]
  • When a number reaches one hundred and one(two) (or several hundred or thousand), singular and dual are used again. (ena knjiga (one book) (singular),dve knjigi (two books) (dual), pet knjig (five books) (plural), sto ena knjiga (101 books) sto dve knjigi(102 books))
  • These and similar examples are very often used incorrectly, even in published or electronic dictionaries.

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 marks plural nouns and adjectives, is not generally pronounced (but see liaison for an exception), and thus does not really show anything; the plural article or determiner is the real indicator of plurality. However, plural nouns still exist in spoken French because some irregular nouns form plurals in a way that is pronounced differently: for example, cheval ("horse") is pronounced [ʃəval], while chevaux ("horses") is pronounced [ʃəvo]. Similarly, some irregular adjectives do decline for number in spoken French.

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.

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 classes, 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):

Effect of number on verbs and other parts of speech

Not only nouns can be declined by number. In many languages, adjectives are declined according to the number of the noun they modify. For example, in French, one may say un arbre vert (a green tree), and des arbres verts ([some] green trees). The word vert (green), in the singular, becomes verts for the plural (unlike English green, which remains green).

In many languages, verbs are conjugated by number as well. Using French as an example again, one says je vois (I see), but nous voyons (we see). The verb voir (to see) in the first person changes from vois in singular, to voyons in plural. In English this occurs in the third person (she runs, they run) but not first or second.

Normally verbs agree with their subject noun in number. But in Ancient Greek and Sanskrit neuter plurals took a singular verb. In English, or at least British English, singular nouns collectively referring to people may take plural verbs, as the committee are meeting; use of this varies by dialect and level of formality.

Other qualifiers may also agree in number. The English article the does not, the demonstratives this, that do, becoming these, those, and the article a, an is omitted or changed to some in the plural. In French and German, the definite articles have gender distinctions in the singular but not the plural. In other Romance languages, including, Portuguese, the indefinite article (um, uma) has plural forms (uns, umas).

See also

• collective noun
• grammar
• mass noun
• measure word

Bibliography

• Beard, R. (1992) "Number". En W. Bright (ed.) International Encyclopedia of Linguistics.
• Corbett, G. (2000) Number. Cambridge University Press.
• Greenberg, Joseph H. (1972) "Numeral classifiers and substantival number: Problems in the genesis of a linguistic type". Working Papers on Language Universals (Stanford University) 9. 1--39.
• Merrifield, William (1959). "Classification of Kiowa nouns." International Journal of American Linguistics, 25, 269-271.
• Mithun, Marianne (1999). The languages of native North America (pp. 81-82, 444-445). Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-23228-7.
• Sprott, Robert (1992). Jemez syntax. (Doctoral dissertation, University of Chicago, USA).
• Sten, Holgar (1949) Le nombre grammatical. (Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Copenhague, 4.) Copenhagen: Munksgaard.
• Watkins, Laurel J.; & McKenzie, Parker. (1984). A grammar of Kiowa. Studies in the anthropology of North American Indians. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0-8032-4727-3.
• Weigel, William F. (1993). Morphosyntactic toggles. Papers from the 29th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society (Vol. 29, pp. 467-478). Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.
• Wiese, Heike (2003). Numbers, language, and the human mind. Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-83182-2.
• Wonderly, Gibson, and Kirk (1954). "Number in Kiowa: Nouns, demonstratives, and adjectives." International Journal of American Linguistics, 20, 1-7.