1 Introduction to Nominal Number

Many natural languages mark nominal number in morphosyntactic ways.

1.1 Some facts about English

English typically distinguishes two nominal forms: unmarked (singular) and marked (plural).

unmarked/singular marked/plural
room rooms
man men
it them
There are several nouns in English that don’t distinguish the two forms, e.g. sheep, deer, fish, aircraft, Pokémon. But their number is indicated by verbal agreement.
Example 1.1

The sheep drinks/drink from the stream. (Corbett 2000: p. 6)

Two uses of the unmarked form should be recognized:
Example 1.2
  1. There is rope on the table. mass
  2. There is a rope on the table. count

  • Some nouns only have mass forms, e.g. blood, evidence, furniture.

  • Some nouns only have plural count forms (pluralia tantum), e.g. scissors, trousers, dregs.

1.2 Number morphology

Corbett (2000):§5.3 lists crosslinguistically common ways of marking number:

  • Suffixation, e.g. English -s, Turkish -lar/-ler
  • Apophony (word-internal sound change), e.g. man-men, goose-geese

  • Inflection, e.g. case inflection in Russian

    стол
    ‘table’     		singular plural
    Nominative стол-_ стол-ы
    Accusative стол-_ стол-ы
    Geninitive стол-а стол-ов
    Dative стол-у стол-ам
    Instrumental стол-ом стол-ами
    Locative стол-е стол-ах

  • Suppletion, e.g. человек-люди in Russian.

  • Reduplication, e.g. partial reduplication in Ilocano (Austronesian; Philippines) (Corbett 2000: p.149):

    singular plural translation
    kaldíŋ kal-kaldíŋ ‘goat’
    púsa pus-púsa ‘cat’
    kláse klas-kláse ’class

  • Sometimes you don’t see number morphology on the noun, but on the verb, as in Example 1.1.

1.3 More number categories

  • Some languages mark singuar-dual-plural, e.g. Slovenian, Sanskrit, Hawaiian. Some of these (e.g. Hawaian) only have dual forms for pronouns, others have dual forms for nouns (e.g. Slovenian, Upper Sorbian).

    (Corbett 2000: p.20)
    singular dual plural translation
    ja mój my 1st person pronoun
    ty wój vy 2nd person pronoun
    hród hrodaj hrody ‘palace, castle’

  • Larike (Moluccan; Indonesia) marks singular-dual-trial-plural (Corbett 2000: §2.2.3).

  • Some languages mark paucal, e.g. Yimas (Lower Sepik; Papua New Guinea). Corbett (2000): p.23 says that a language that has paucal often marks dual as well.

  • There are languages that are said to mark quadral as well, but according to Corbett (2000): §2.2.5, the relevant data might be better analyzed as paucal.

  • Greater plural is used for an excessive/unusual amount, e.g. Niger-Kordofanian (Corbett 2000: p.31).

    singular plural greater plural translation
    ngesa gese geseeli ‘field’
    wuro gure gureeli ‘herd’

    Food for thought: N after N in English seems to be geater plural (with obligatorily distributivity).

Greenberg (1963)’s Universal 34: No language has a trial number unless it has a dual. No language has a dual unless it has a plural.

Greenberg also says that no language has a plural unless it has a singular, but as Corbett (2000) :p.38 argies, there are languages with a plural and general number, not a singular, e.g. Japanese.

1.4 General number

Genereal number should be distinguished from singular.

In Japanese, Unmarked nouns are underspecified for number (similarly to ‘mass nouns’ in English).
Example 1.3

niwa-ni kireina hana-ga saiteiru.
garden-LOC beautiful flower-NOM are.in.flower
‘There is a flower/are flowers in the garden’

There are ways to express mark plurality on nouns in Japanese.

  • -tachi (Nakanishi and Tomioka 2004)
    Example 1.4

    sensei-tachi-ga hataraitieru.
    teacher-PL-nom are.working
    ‘(The) teachers are working.’

  • Reduplication (Sudo 2017)
    Example 1.5

    niwa-ni kireina hana-bana-ga saiteiru.
    garden-LOC beautiful flower-flower-NOM are.in.flower
    ‘There are flowers in the garden.’

But there is no way to mark singularity on nouns in Japanese. You have to use a numeral (and a classifier).

Korean, Vietnamese, Mandarin Chinese are similar to Japanese in this respect.

But it’s not the case that a language with general number cannot have singular. E.g. Baiso (Cushitic; Ethiopia) has spearate forms for singular and general number (Corbett 2000: §2.1):

general number singular paucal plural
lúban lubántiti lubanjaa lubanjool

Note that the general number form is unmarked.

1.5 Singulative

Corbett (2000), p. 17 remarks that there is no language with two number cateogories such that the unmarked form is general number, and the marked form is singular.

There are languages where a small number of nouns show a pattern like this, e.g. Arbore (Cushitic; Ethiopia) (Corbett 2000: p. 17).

singulative general number translation
tiis-in tíise ‘maize cob’
lassa-n lásse ‘bread’
nebel-in nebel ‘ostrich’

This type of singular marking should be distinguished from cases where the base form is plural, rather than general number, e.g. Welsh (Grimm 2012, 586).

singulative collective translation
cacyn-en cacwn ‘hornet’
picwn-en picwn ‘bee’
chwann-en chwain ‘flea’
dincod-yn dincod ‘seed’
cneu-en cnau ‘nut’

Dagaar (Gur; Northern Ghana) exhibts a version of this called inverse number, where the same morpheme sometimes marks plural and sometimes singular, depending on the noun (data from Grimm, n.d.).

singular plural translation
bíé bíí-rí child
nàŋá nàn-ní scorpion
bí-rì bíè seed
lúg-rì lúgó pillar