1 INTRODUCTION
In English, only two numbers are distinguished, singular, which denotes one, and plural, which denotes more than one. The survivals of a dual number are few: twice, both.
The two numbers are distinguished in nouns, pronouns, verbs. Sometimes in adjectives and in adverbs, only in twice and thrice (rare).
2 PLURAL IN ADJECTIVES
Quantitative: little – few
Less – fewer
Much – many
Both
Numerals
This these that those
3 PLURAL IN PRONOUNS
The irregularity of the pronominal inflexion makes it necessary to enumerate here all the forms:
Singular | Plural |
I, me (thou, thee), you He him She her it Myself Yourself Himself Herself Itself This That one | We, us (ye) you They, them They, them They, them Ourselves Yourselves Themselves Themselves Themselves These Those Ones |
4 PLURAL IN VERBS
Singular and plural in verbs has nothing to do with the verbal idea. When we say children play, there are not several acts of singing. The absence of s is a meaningless grammatical feature showing the dependence of the verb on its subject.
SPECIAL CASES:
AND: The verb goes in singular when the two elements form one conception:
“man and wife is one flesh”
OR: If there is an idea of addition, the verb goes in plural:
“cinema or music were his occupation”
ARITHMATICAL FORMULAE:
The usage wavers: six and six is / are twelve.
ATTRIBUTE:
There is an hesitation between Is and are when subject and attribute have different number:
Children is / are happiness.
5 PLURAL IN NOUNS
REGULAR PLURAL
Plural is made by adding an –s to the noun.
Pronunciation:
/iz/ after sibilants
/z/ after voiced
/s/ after voiceless
Spelling:
es after sibilants, pros, pianos.
In other cases there is considerable vacillation.
IRREGULAR PLURAL
VOICING: baths, calves, knives, shelves.
MUTATION: lice, mice, men, teeth, feet.
-EN: children, oxen, brethren.
FOREIGN PLURALS
Words from latin and greek:
1ª algae, formulae, verrucae
2ª colossi, antropophagi, magi, cacto
aquarium – aquaria (but museums)
criterium – criteria (but lexicons) (greek)
3ª analysis – es
appendix – appendices
hypothesis – hypotheses
crisis – es
4ª apparatus /us/ – apparatus /jus/
5ª series – series
Species – species
ISOLATED PLURALS IN –A
Genus – genera
Abdomen – abdominal
Phantasma – phantasmata
Thema – themata
WORDS FROM ITALIAN
Gondolier – gondolieri
Diletante – dilettanti
Banditto – banditti
Solo – soli
WORDS FROM FRENCH
Bureau – bureaux
Tableau – tableaux
Portmanteau – portmanteaux
WORDS FROM HEBREw
Cherub – cherubim
Seraph – seraphim
USE OF SINGULAR AND PLURAL IN NOUNS
SINGULARIA TANTUM
Nouns only used in singular. They are nouns that only have one number form, that is, they never take an –s suffix:
Concrete mass nouns: gold, silver, uranium, coke, etc
Abstract mass nouns: courage, music, dirt, depair, haste, etc
Proper nouns
Collective nouns: cattle, clergy, police.
Originally plural nouns used now in the singular. The suffix –s has lost its plural meaning.
News
Diseases as measles, mumps
Subject names in ics: mathematics, physics, politics
Some games: billiards, bowls, darts, dominoes
Some proper nouns. Algiers, Athens, Brussels.
PLURALIA TANTUM
Always in plural, never without –s.
Summation plurals: tools and articles of dress which have always two parts: scissors, tongs, trousers, glasses.
Other words: antipodes, middle ages, earnings, fireworks, funds, goods, savings, etc
ZERO PLURAL
In some nouns, the singular and plural forms are identical:
Note the difference between nouns which are invariable: music (always singular) Cattle (always plural)
and zero or unchanged plural nouns, which take the same form with singular and plural verbs:
This sheep is small. These ship are small.
Names of animals:
With animals that have two plurals, zero plural is more common when denoting hunting quarries:
We caught a lot of fish.
And the regular plural to talk about different individuals, species, etc:
The fishes in these two tanks are dangerous.
Zero plural animals are: crab, antelope, duck, fish, herring, trout, carp, deer, sheep.
Names of nationality in –ese: Japanese, Portuguese, Chinese…
Words indicating number:
Specially used as pre-modifiers:
Dozens of books / two dozen glasses
Many thousand insects, five million euros, several head of cattle
Nouns ending in –s
Alms, barracks, gallows, headqarters, means, series, species
DIFFERENTIATED PLURAL
In many cases, the plural has a meaning which is different from the singular.
Memory has three different meanings: the faculty “an excellent memory”, what is remembered “the memory of my olds”, an act of remembrance “memories of my childhood”.
Other words show more semantic difference in singular and plural:
Custom: habit. Customs: duties, taxes on imported goods.
Effect: result. Effects: personal property.
Domino: a kind of mask. Dominoes: a game
Force: strength. Forces: the army.
Light: illuminating power. Lights: understanding.
Salt: seasoning substance. Salts: smelling substance.
PLURAL OF COMPOUNDS
In most compounds, the final element takes the plural inflexion: gentlemen.
There are some exceptions that must be noted:
In appositional compounds, when the word man or woman is the first, the two parts are inflected:
Men servants, women servants
In compound titles, both elements are often inflected: lords lieutenants, knights templars.
In some combinations of verb + adverb or preposition, the first element takes the inflection: breaks away, breaks down
Verbal nouns in –er / -ing + adverb, have –s in the first element: lookers-on, bringers-up, standers-by, goers-out, goings-on, settings-up, knockings-down.
Substantive + preposition + substantive: the first element usually takes the –s.
Sons-in-law, men-of-war.
COUNTABLE AND UNCOUNTABLE
CLASSIFICATION:
According to content:
Countable nouns denote things that can be counted.
They can refer to material things (chair, car, window), or immaterial things (knock, week, talk).
Uncountable nouns denote things that can´t be counted.
They refer to material things (wine, gold, air), or immaterial (anxiety, music, happiness).
Other denominations are those of Jespersen (thing-words / mass-words), and Zandvoort (class-nouns / material-nouns).
According to function:
Leech and quirk define countable nouns as words that can have a plural form. Mass nouns, refer to substances, qualities, etc, that can´t have a plural form.
Some nouns can belong to both categories, for example hair.
Quirk uses a specific context to classify nouns:
I saw
Count nouns | Uncountable nouns | Combining both characteristics |
– | Furniture | Cake |
The bottle | The furniture | The cake |
A bottle | – | A cake |
– | Some furniture | Some cake |
bottles | – | Cakes |
According to morphologic and syntactic aspects
Countable nouns are nearly always preceded by a determiner, uncountable nouns are usually used without any determiner, or the determiners much and little.
Countable nouns can take the plural inflection.
According to semantic aspects
Some words have what quirk calls dual membership. Wood, for example, is countable when it refers to a collection of trees (a forest), and non-countable when it refers to the material of which trees are composed.
COUNTABLE AND UNCOUNTABLES IN THE SAME AREA OF MEANING
In many cases English has a separate count noun an a separate non-count noun referring to the same area of meaning:
Countable non countable
A loaf bread
A meal food
A sheep mutton
A pig pork
A leaf follage
DOUBLE USE OF NOUNS WITH CHANGE OF MEANING
Some nouns can be countable and uncountable with some difference of meaning.
Paper
Beauty
Work
DETERMINERS
Following Quirk words, “there are six classes of determiners with respect to their co-ocurrence with the noun classes singular countable, plural countable, and non-countable nouns. These determiners are the following:
Singular count | Plural count | Uncountable | |
The, possessives, no, which, whose, what, some, any | + | + | + |
This, that | + | + | |
These, those | + | ||
Ǿ, some, any, (not stressed) enough | + | + | |
A, an, every, each, either, neither | + | ||
much | + |
PREMODIFIERS
In addition to determiners, there is a large number of other closed-systems that occur before the head of the noun phrase. Quirk calls them pre-modifiers and divides them in three classes:
Predeterminers (all, both, half, double, twice, three…times, fractions).
Ordinals
Quantifiers (many, few, several, much, little, enough)
Open class: a great number of, a large quantity of…..
Partitives: general pieces, bit, item
Typical: sheet of paper, loaf of bread, slice of cake, bar of chocolate…