2192: Plurals that aren't Plural Dec 15, 2020

This is the final post of Pluralization Week. To see the whole collection together, visit this collection.

Notional agreement, also discussed under the broader label of synesis, is a phenomenon in which a grammatical construction will take on number or gender when relevant, which is not strictly grammatical, but which is otherwise implicit from the concept. For instance, in English plurals are often treated as singular or vice versa depending on how it is considered. Take for instance the seemingly contradictory grammar:

The British government are divided.

Great Britain is a wealthy nation.

This is especially common when there is something that distances the subject from the verb, such as:

*The number of people moving to big cities are increasing

*Five hundred dollars is a lot of money

2191: Languages without Plural Dec 14, 2020

While languages have multiple different types of pluralization in their morphology, some have none. Indeed, across the Austronesian languages there is a great deal of diversity in this matter, with Sursurunga having 5 and Indonesian having ostensibly 0. This is not to say languages like this, especially common around East Asia and the Pacific, have no way of expressing plural obviously, but that it will either be done through a certain amount of context as with the English 'sheep-sheep', with specific determiners as with the Maori

te ngeru (the cat)

ngā ngeru (the cats)

where the nouns stay the same, but the determiners are different. In other cases, as in Indonesian, there will be some of these markers but if not, there will be reduplication,

Kucing (cat)

Kucing-kucing (cats). This is certainly a syntactic way to express the plural, but lacks a specific morpheme.

2190: Plural as the Default Dec 13, 2020

Usually, plurals are formed from the singular, but this is not always the case. Exceptionally, in Welsh for instance there are words for which the plural is the base and singulars are formed off of that. This is on top of the fact Welsh has plurals where no non-affixed form exists: ‘merlen’ (a pony) and ‘merlod’ (ponies), but no *merl. Now, take the examples of

Llygod (mice, pl.) but llygoden (mouse, sg.)

Erfin (turnips, pl.) but erfinen (turnip sg.)

These have the same singular ending as with ‘merlen’ but the plural form is indistinguishable from a root, lacking any additional morphology. Keep in mind this is unlike languages like Latin or Finnish where endings indicate not only singular–plural, but also case. There is no particular reason why the singular will resemble the root if one would have to, but looking at how exceptional this is, it could be said to make intuitive sense. Celtic languages did once historically have cases which one could try to explain this with, but so did English, French, and many other such Indo-European languages where this does not happen.

2189: Massive and Numerative Plurals Dec 12, 2020

While some languages distinguish between paucal (unknown few) and greater plurals (unknown many), others have a massive plural and a numerative plural. To illustrate the difference—though keep in mind this does not exist in English—a massive plural implies indivisibility, such as using pluralization to discuss the "waters of the Indian Ocean". Of course in that example using ‘waters’ is not strictly necessary anyway so consider also that English distinguishes between ‘fish’ [singular], ‘fish’ [like a collective plural] and ‘fishes’ [like a divisible plural] i.e. ‘types of fish’. Languages that morphologically distinguish between massive plural and a numerative plural (unlike English) don’t necessarily have both, such as Welsh which has a separate singular, plural, and massive (collective) plural but not numerative per se. Because English has no productive way to distinguish mass nouns morphology, ostensibly singular nouns like ‘sand’ need to be disambiguated with whole phrases, in this case ‘grain of sand’. Slavic and Semitic languages etc. also distinguish certain qualities of massive plurals.

2188: Paucal, Trial, and Greater Plurals Dec 11, 2020

In addition to the dual number, another number besides simply singular and plural is the paucal, which crops up in a number of different languages such as many Oceanic languages, Serbo-Croatian, some Cushitic languages, and Hopi. This is used specifically for a small but unspecified number; in English one would have to use other words like ‘a few’ rather than using morphology. In other languages too there is the trial, used for specifically three objects. There are however, some languages that rather than distinguishing between small numbers distinguish between greater ones. The greater plural—though all grammatical numbers are equally good ☺—is a syntactic category of some languages including Mele-Fila, a Polynesian language, that distinguishes large quantities, relative how much would be expected. This does allow some room for subjective understanding how much is 'a lot' for a given word, but for instance it might be used when discussing thousands of flowers in a park, or just a handful of luxury cars all together. Of course, this distinguishes from the paucal which is just as subjective. Moreover, Mele-Fila and these other languages with a greater plural will generally still use the plural for exact numbers. It should be noted that while this is a general overview, each language will treat these differently, such as Sursurunga which has a ‘lesser-plural’ in its pronoun system, once thought to be a trial number, but actually it can refer to either 3 or 4 people. Indeed Sursurunga has some of the most complicated numerical system for its grammar, distinguishing between singular, dual, (aforementioned) paucal, greater paucal, and plural.

2187: Hebrew and Arabic Dual Dec 10, 2020

The dual—a distinct plural for 2 of something—is common around many languages of the world, but there are differences in how its used. In Hebrew and Arabic, especially in the older forms of those languages, use of the dual seems compulsory, but this is not universally so. In Arabic it is simpler that any word, regardless of gender, will simply take ان‎ (-ān) or the more modern ين‎ (-ain) but this is being lost in some dialects. In Hebrew this is more complicated, with several different factors like gender and semantics factoring in. Often this is distinguished between the masculine plural ־ים‎ (-im) and the dual ־יים‎ (ayim), such as

יום / יומיים / ימים

‎(yōm / yomạyim / yāmīm) for 'day', ‘two days', and 'days' but often there is no written distinction, especially for masculine nouns, as with עין / עיניים‎ (ayin / ʿēnạyim) for 'eye(s)'. Indeed, in Modern Hebrew, there is no productive use of the dual, but words for time and body parts often still retain it. Notably, in Hebrew, only nouns can have dual, so adjectives, verbs, etc. that need to correspond with a dual will usually use the standard plural.

2186: How Pluralization Can Affect Meaning: 'Oczy' vs. 'Oka' Dec 9, 2020

While pluralization may often be merely a necessary aspect of a language's grammar, sometimes it can have an impact on the semantics too. The Polish noun 'oko' means both 'eye' but also 'oil droplet' and while the plural for the first meaning is 'oczy', for the second it is 'oka'. The reason for this distinction is ostensibly due to the so-called dual number, a form of plural used specifically for things which come in pairs. That is why also even if it is more than 2 eyes, or exactly 2 oil droplets being referred to, the same plural forms are used. Indeed, while the dual is used primarily for things which are considered generally to come as pairs but in Polish and also Russian certain forms of nouns will have different forms for referring to 2, 3, or 4 of that noun, but this extension is limited to the genitive or nominative plural for Polish. Uses for the dual beyond this will be the topic tomorrow.

This post is the start of Pluralization Week, to celebrate the 6th anniversary of the blog.

6 Year Anniversary—Pluralization Week: Starting Dec. 9, 2020

2 weeks until Word Facts turns 6 years old!

Starting Dec. 9, 2020 will be Pluralization Week: all 7 posts will focus on different aspects of pluralization and the notable grammar surrounding it considering languages from all around the world.