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Grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a feature of nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one", "two" or "three or more"). English and many other languages present number categories of singular or plural. Some languages also have a dual, trial and paucal number or other arrangements.
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".
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 contrast between singular and plural number (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:
The quantity 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 noun forms are subdivided into morphological classes according to the quantity they express, such that:
This is partly true for English: every noun and pronoun form is singular or plural (a few, such as "fish", "cannon" and "you", can be either, according to context). Some modifiers of nouns—namely the demonstrative determiners—and finite verbs inflect to agree with the number of the noun forms they modify or have as subject: this car and these cars are correct, while *this cars and *these car are incorrect. However, adjectives do not inflect for number, and many verb forms do not distinguish between singular and plural ("She/They went", "She/They can go", "She/They had gone", "She/They will go").
Many languages distinguish between count nouns and mass nouns. Only count nouns can be freely used in the singular and in the plural. Mass nouns, like "milk", "gold", and "furniture", are normally invariant. (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.)
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Grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a feature of nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one", "two" or "three or more"). English and many other languages present number categories of singular or plural. Some languages also have a dual, trial and paucal number or other arrangements.
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".
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 contrast between singular and plural number (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:
The quantity 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 noun forms are subdivided into morphological classes according to the quantity they express, such that:
This is partly true for English: every noun and pronoun form is singular or plural (a few, such as "fish", "cannon" and "you", can be either, according to context). Some modifiers of nouns—namely the demonstrative determiners—and finite verbs inflect to agree with the number of the noun forms they modify or have as subject: this car and these cars are correct, while *this cars and *these car are incorrect. However, adjectives do not inflect for number, and many verb forms do not distinguish between singular and plural ("She/They went", "She/They can go", "She/They had gone", "She/They will go").
Many languages distinguish between count nouns and mass nouns. Only count nouns can be freely used in the singular and in the plural. Mass nouns, like "milk", "gold", and "furniture", are normally invariant. (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.)