In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one" or "more than one"). In Languages agreement is a form of cross-reference between different parts of a sentence or phrase ^[1]

The count distinctions typically, but not always, correspond to the actual count of the referents of the marked noun or pronoun. In general a reference is a relation between objects in which one object designates by linking to another object For other meanings see the disambiguation page Marker In Linguistics, a marker is a free or bound Morpheme that indicates

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". In Linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a Verb defines the temporal flow (or lack thereof in the described event or state

Contents 1 Overview 2 Number in specific languages 2.1 English 2.2 French 2.3 Hebrew 2.4 Russian 3 Types of number 3.1 Singular versus plural 3.2 Singulative versus collective 3.3 Dual 3.4 Trial 3.5 Paucal 3.6 Distributive plural 3.7 Inverse number 4 Formal expression of number 4.1 Number particles 4.2 Obligatoriness of number marking 5 Number agreement 5.1 Verbs 5.2 Adjectives and determiners 5.3 Exceptions 5.4 Collective nouns 6 Semantic vs. grammatical number 7 Auxiliary languages 8 See also 9 Notes 10 Bibliography

Overview

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.

Grammatical number is a morphological category characterized by the expression of quantity through inflection or agreement. Quantity is a kind of property which exists as magnitude or multitude As an example, consider the English sentences below:

That apple on the table is fresh.

Those two apples on the table are fresh.

The number 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". Note that, especially in the second sentence, this information can be considered redundant, since quantity is already indicated by the numeral "two". In the study of language, redundancy is considered a vital feature of language

A language has grammatical number when its nouns are subdivided into morphological classes according to the quantity they express, such that:

1. Every noun belongs to a single number class. Morphology is the field of Linguistics that studies the internal structure of words (Number partitions nouns into disjoint classes. )
2. Noun modifiers (such as adjectives) and verbs have different forms for each number class, and must be inflected to match the number of the nouns they refer to. In Grammar, a modifier (or qualifier) is a word or Sentence element that limits or qualifies another word a phrase or a clause For English usage of verbs see the wiki article English verbs. In Grammar, inflection or inflexion is the way language handles grammatical relations and relational categories such as tense, mood, voice (Number is an agreement category. In Languages agreement is a form of cross-reference between different parts of a sentence or phrase )

This is the case in English: every noun is either singular or plural (a few, such as "fish", can be either, according to context), and at least some modifiers of nouns — namely the demonstratives, the personal pronouns, the articles, and verbs — are inflected to agree with the number of the nouns they refer to: "this car" and "these cars" are correct, while "*this cars" or "*these car" are ungrammatical. Demonstratives are deictic words (they depend on an external frame of reference that indicate which entities a speaker refers to and distinguishes those entities from others The personal pronouns of English can have various forms according to gender, number, person, and case. For English usage of verbs see the wiki article English verbs.

Not all languages have number as a grammatical category. In those that do not, quantity must be expressed either directly, with numerals, or indirectly, through optional quantifiers. In Linguistics, a number name, or numeral, is a symbol or group of symbols or a Word in a Natural language that represents a Number Quantification has two distinct meanings In Mathematics and Empirical science, it refers to human acts known as Counting and Measuring However, many of these languages compensate for the lack of grammatical number with an extensive system of measure words. In Linguistics, measure words, known more formally as numeral classifiers and also called counters, count words, counter words, or

There is a hierarchy among number categories: No language distinguishes a trial unless having a dual, and no language has dual without a plural. ^[2]

Number in specific languages

English

Main article: English plural

English is typical of most world languages, in distinguishing only between singular and plural number. In the English Language, Nouns are inflected for Grammatical number —that is singular or Plural. English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States The plural form of a word is usually created by adding the suffix -(e)s. In Grammar, a suffix (also postfix, ending) is an Affix which is placed at the end of a word Common exceptions include the pronouns, which have irregular plurals, as in I versus we, because they are ancient and frequently used words.

French

In its written form, French declines nouns for number (singular or plural). French ( français,) is a Romance language spoken around the world by 118 million people as a native language and by about 180 to 260 million people In speech, however, the majority of nouns (and adjectives) are not for the most part declined for number. This is because the typical plural suffix "-s" or "-es", is silent, and thus does not really indicate a change in pronunciation. However:

• the spoken distinction can reappear when liaison occurs and
• some plurals do differ from the singular in pronunciation; for example, masculine singulars in -al [-al] typically form masculine plurals in -aux [-o]. In French, most written word-final Consonants are silent in most contexts
• Proper nouns are not pluralized, even in writing. (Les voitures, but Les Peugeot 404)

Normally, the article or determiner is the primary indicator of number. The Peugeot 404 was a mid-sized Automobile produced by the French manufacturer Peugeot from 1960 to 1978 (certain markets until 1989

Hebrew

In Modern Hebrew, a Semitic language, most nouns have only singular and plural forms, such as ספר /'sɛfɛʁ/ "book" and ספרים /sfaʁ'im/ "books", but some have distinct dual forms using a distinct dual suffix (largely nouns pertaining to numbers or time, such as אלפיים /al'pajim/ "two thousand" and שבועיים /ʃvu'ajim/ "two weeks"), some use this dual suffix for their regular plurals (largely body parts that tend to come in pairs, such as עיניים /eɪ'najim/ "eyes", as well as some that don't, such as שיניים /ʃi'najim/ "teeth"), and some are inherently dual (such as מכנסיים /mɪxna'sajim/ "pants" and אופניים /ofa'najim/ "bicycle"). The Semitic languages are a Language family whose living representatives are spoken by more than 467 million people across much of the Middle East, Adjectives, verbs, and pronouns agree with their subjects' or antecedents' numbers, but only have a two-way distinction between singular and plural; dual nouns entail plural adjectives, verbs, and pronouns.

Russian

Modern Russian has a singular vs plural number system, but the declension of noun phrases containing numeral expressions is subject to complex rules. Russian ( transliteration:,) is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages In Linguistics, declension (or declination) is the occurrence of Inflection in Nouns Pronouns and Adjectives indicating For example, "У меня есть одна книга / три книги / пять книг" ("I have one book-nom. sing. / three book-gen. sing. / five book-gen. plur. "). See Dual number: Slavic languages for a discussion of number phrases in Russian and other Slavic languages. Dual is a Grammatical number that some languages use in addition to singular and Plural.

The numeral "one" has a plural form, used with pluralia tantum: одни джинсы / одни часы "one pair of jeans, one clock". A plurale tantum (plural pluralia tantum) is a noun that appears only in the Plural form and does not have a singular variant though it may still refer ^[3]

Types of number

Singular versus plural

Main article: Plural

In most languages with grammatical number, nouns, and sometimes other parts of speech, have two forms, the singular, for one instance of a concept, and the plural, for more than one instance. Plural is a Grammatical number, typically referring to more than one of the Referent in the real world Usually, the singular is the unmarked form of a word, and the plural is obtained by inflecting the singular. For other meanings see the disambiguation page Marker In Linguistics, a marker is a free or bound Morpheme that indicates In Grammar, inflection or inflexion is the way language handles grammatical relations and relational categories such as tense, mood, voice This is the case in English: car/cars, box/boxes, man/men. There may be exceptional nouns whose plural is identical to the singular: one fish / two fish.

Singulative versus collective

Main article: Singulative number

Some languages differentiate between an unmarked form, the collective, which is indifferent in respect to number, and a marked form for single entities, called the singulative in this context. In Linguistics, singulative number and collective number are terms used when the Grammatical number for multiple items is the unmarked form In morpheme-based morphology, a null morpheme is a Morpheme that is realized by a phonologically null Affix (an empty string of phonological For example, Japanese and some Brythonic languages. is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities The Brythonic languages (or Brittonic languages or British languages) form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic language family the other being A rough example in English is "snowflake", which may be considered a singulative form of "snow" (however, English has no productive process of forming singulative nouns, and no singulative modifiers, so it cannot be said to have a singulative number). In Linguistics, productivity is the degree to which Native speakers use a particular grammatical process especially in Word formation. In Grammar, a modifier (or qualifier) is a word or Sentence element that limits or qualifies another word a phrase or a clause In other languages, singulatives can be regularly formed from collective nouns; e. In Linguistics, a collective noun is a word used to define a group of objects where "objects" can be People, Animals Inanimate things g. Standard Arabic حجر ḥajar "stone" → حجرة ḥajara "(individual) stone", بقر baqar "cattle" → بقرة baqara "(single) cow". Literary Arabic (ar اللغة العربية الفصحى "the Eloquent Arabic language" or Standard Arabic is the literary and standard variety In Russian, the suffix for forming singulative form is -ин- -in-; e. Russian ( transliteration:,) is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages g. град grad "hail" → градина gradina "hailstone", лёд lyod "ice" → льдина l'dina "block of ice". In both Russian and Arabic, the singulative form always takes on the feminine gender. In Linguistics, grammatical genders, sometimes also called Noun classes are classes of nouns reflected in the behavior of associated words every noun must belong

Dual

Main article: Dual (grammatical number)

The distinction between a "singular" number (one) and a "plural" number (more than one) found in English is not the only possible classification. Dual is a Grammatical number that some languages use in addition to singular and Plural. Another one is "singular" (one), "dual" (two) and "plural" (more than two). Dual number existed in Proto-Indo-European, persisted in many of the now extinct ancient Indo-European languages that descended from it—Sanskrit, Ancient Greek and Gothic for example—and can still be found in a few modern Indo-European languages such as Icelandic and Slovene language. Sanskrit (sa संस्कृता वाक् saṃskṛtā vāk, for short sa संस्कृतम् saṃskṛtam) is a historical The Ancient Greek language is the historical stage in the development of the Hellenic language family spanning the Archaic (c Gothic is an extinct Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. Icelandic ( is a North Germanic language, the language of Iceland. Slovene or Slovenian ( slovenski jezik or slovenščina, not to be confused with Slovenčina) is a South Slavic language Many more modern Indo-European languages show residual traces of the dual, as in the English distinctions both vs. English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States all, either vs. any, twice vs. <number> times (an archaic thrice also exists, meaning "three times"), and so on.

Many Semitic languages also have dual number. The Semitic languages are a Language family whose living representatives are spoken by more than 467 million people across much of the Middle East, For instance, in Arabic all nouns can have singular, plural, or dual forms. For non-broken plurals, masculine plural nouns end with ون -ūn and feminine plural nouns end with ات -āt, whilst ان -ān, is added to the end of a noun to indicate that it is dual (even among nouns that have broken plurals). In Linguistics, broken plurals are a grammatical phenomenon typical in many Semitic languages of the Middle East and Ethiopia in which a singular

Trial

The trial number is a grammatical number referring to 'three items', in contrast to 'singular' (one item), 'dual' (two items), and 'plural' (four or more items). Tolomako, Lihir, Manam and Tok Pisin (though only in its pronouns) have trial number. Tolomako is a language of the Oceanic subgroup of Austronesian languages. The Lihir language is spoken in the Lihir island group in New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea. Manam is a Kairiru-Manam language spoken mainly on the volcanic Manam Island, northeast of New Guinea. Tok Pisin ( tok means "word" or "speech" as in "talk" pisin means " Pidgin " is a creole spoken throughout

Paucal

Paucal number, for a few (as opposed to many) instances of the referent (e. g. in Hopi, Warlpiri and in Arabic for some nouns). Hopi is a Uto-Aztecan language spoken by the Hopi people (a Pueblo group of northeastern Arizona, USA although today some Hopi are monolingual The Warlpiri language is spoken by about 3000 of the Warlpiri people in Australia 's Northern Territory. Arabic (ar الْعَرَبيّة (informally ar عَرَبيْ) in terms of the number of speakers is the largest living member of the Semitic language See Plural for some examples. Plural is a Grammatical number, typically referring to more than one of the Referent in the real world

Distributive plural

Distributive plural number, for many instances viewed as independent individuals (e. g. in Navajo). Navajo or Navaho ( native name: Diné bizaad) is an Athabaskan language (of Na-Dené stock spoken in the southwest United States by

Inverse number

The languages of the Kiowa-Tanoan family have three numbers — singular, dual, and plural — and exhibit an unusual system of marking number, called inverse number (or number toggling). Kiowa-Tanoan (also Tanoan-Kiowa) is a family of languages spoken in New Mexico, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. In this scheme, every countable noun has what might be called its "inherent" or "expected" numbers, and is unmarked for these. In Linguistics, a count noun (also countable noun) is a noun which can be modified by a Numeral and occur in both singular and Plural When a noun appears in an "inverse" (atypical) 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 which inflect for number as follows:

class	description	singular	dual	plural
I	animate nouns	-	-sh	-sh
II	some inanimate nouns	-sh	-sh	-
III	other inanimate nouns	-	-sh	-
IV	mass (non-countable) nouns	(n/a)	(n/a)	(n/a)

As can be seen, class-I nouns are inherently singular, class-II nouns are inherently plural, class-III nouns are inherently singular or plural. In Linguistics, the term noun class refers to a system of categorizing Nouns A noun may belong to a given class because of characteristic features of its Referent Class-IV nouns cannot be counted and are never marked with -sh. (From Sprott 1992, p. 53. )

A similar system is seen in Kiowa (Kiowa is distantly related to Tanoan languages like Jemez):

class	singular	dual	plural
I	-	-	-gɔ
II	-gɔ	-	-
III	-ɡɔ	-	-ɡɔ
IV	(n/a)	(n/a)	(n/a)

Formal expression of number

Synthetic languages typically distinguish grammatical number by inflection. Kiowa is a Kiowa-Tanoan language spoken by the Kiowa Tribe in southwestern Oklahoma in primarily Caddo, Kiowa, and A synthetic language, in Linguistic typology, is a Language with a high Morpheme -per- word ratio In Grammar, inflection or inflexion is the way language handles grammatical relations and relational categories such as tense, mood, voice (Note that analytic languages, such as Chinese, don't have grammatical number. In morphological typology (in linguistics an isolating language (also analytic language) is any Language in which words are composed of Spoken Chinese ( comprises many regional variants the largest of which are Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese, and Min. ) In most languages, the singular is formally unmarked, whereas the plural is marked in some way. For other meanings see the disambiguation page Marker In Linguistics, a marker is a free or bound Morpheme that indicates Other languages, most notably the Bantu languages, mark both the singular and the plural, for instance Swahili (see example below). The Bantu languages (technically Narrow Bantu languages) constitute a grouping belonging to the Niger-Congo family Swahili (called Kiswahili in the language itself is the First language of the Swahili people (Waswahili who inhabit several large stretches The third logical possibility, rarely found in languages, is an unmarked plural contrasting with marked singular. Below are some examples of number affixes for nouns (where the inflecting morphemes are underlined):

• Affixation (by adding or removing suffixes, prefixes, or circumfixes):
  • Estonian puu "tree, wood" (singular) — puud "trees, woods" (plural)
  • Finnish: lehmä "cow" (singular) — lehmät "cows" (plural)
  • Slovenian: lipa "linden" (singular) — lipi "linden" (dual) — lipe "linden" (plural)
  • Sanskrit puruṣas "man" (singular) - puruṣau "two men" (dual) - puruṣās "men" (plural)
  • Swahili: mtoto "child" (singular) — watoto "children" (plural)
  • Luganda: omusajja "man" (singular) — abasajja "men" (plural)
  • Berber: أمغر amghar "woman" (singular) — تمغرت tmghart "women" (plural)
  • Georgian: კაცი k'ac-i "man" (singular) - კაცები k'ac-eb-i "men" (where -i is the nominative case marker)
• Simulfixion (through various kinds of internal sound alternations):
  • Arabic: كِتَاب kitāb "book" (singular) — كُتُب kutub "books" (plural)
  • Welsh: maharen "ram" - meheryn "rams"
• Reduplication (through doubling):
  • Indonesian: orang "person" (singular) — orang-orang "people" (plural)
  • Somali: buug "book" (singular) — buug-ag "books" (plural)

Elements marking number may appear on nouns and pronouns in dependent-marking languages or on verbs and adjectives in head-marking languages. An affix is a Morpheme that is attached to a stem to form a word In Morpheme-based morphology, a morpheme is the smallest linguistic unit that has semantic meaning. An affix is a Morpheme that is attached to a stem to form a word In Grammar, a suffix (also postfix, ending) is an Affix which is placed at the end of a word A circumfix is an Affix, a Morpheme that is placed around another morpheme Estonian (; ˈeːsti ˈkeːl is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1 Finnish ( or suomen kieli) is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland (92% As of 2006) and by ethnic Finns outside Slovene or Slovenian ( slovenski jezik or slovenščina, not to be confused with Slovenčina) is a South Slavic language Sanskrit (sa संस्कृता वाक् saṃskṛtā vāk, for short sa संस्कृतम् saṃskṛtam) is a historical Swahili (called Kiswahili in the language itself is the First language of the Swahili people (Waswahili who inhabit several large stretches Luganda, sometimes known as Ganda, is a major language of Uganda, spoken by over three million people mainly in the Buganda region which includes Nomenclature The term Berber has been used in Europe since at least the 17th century and is still used today Georgian (ka ქართული ენა kartuli ena) is the Official language of Georgia, a country in the Caucasus. In Linguistics, a simulfix is a type of Affix that changes one or more existing Phonemes in order to modify the meaning of a Morpheme. Arabic (ar الْعَرَبيّة (informally ar عَرَبيْ) in terms of the number of speakers is the largest living member of the Semitic language Welsh ( cy Cymraeg or cy y Gymraeg, kəmˈrɑːɨɡ and {{IPA|[ə ɡəmˈrɑːɨɡ]}}, is a member of the Brythonic branch of Celtic Reduplication, in Linguistics, is a morphological Process by which the root or stem of a Word, or part of it is repeated Indonesian or Bahasa Indonesia, based on the Riau version of Malay language, was declared the official language with the declaration of Somali ( Af Soomaali, الصوماليه is a member of the East Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family spoken by ethnic Somalis In Linguistics and Grammar, a pronoun is a Pro-form that substitutes for a (including a noun phrase consisting of a single Noun) with or A dependent-marking Language is one where the grammatical marks showing relations between different constituents of a Phrase tend to be placed on the For English usage of verbs see the wiki article English verbs. In Grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a Noun or Pronoun, giving more information about the A head-marking Language is one where the grammatical marks showing relations between different constituents of a phrase tend to be placed on the heads

English (dependent-marking)	Western Apache (head-marking)
Paul is teaching the cowboy.	Paul idilohí yiłch’ígó’aah.
Paul is teaching the cowboys.	Paul idilohí yiłch’ídagó’aah.

In the English sentence above, the plural suffix -s is added to the noun cowboy. In the Western Apache, a head-marking language, equivalent, a plural prefix da- is added to the verb yiłch’ígó’aah "he is teaching him", resulting in yiłch’ídagó’aah "he is teaching them" while noun idilohí "cowboy" is unmarked for number. Western Apache refers to the similar Apache peoples living primarily in east central Arizona. A head-marking Language is one where the grammatical marks showing relations between different constituents of a phrase tend to be placed on the heads

Number particles

Plurality is sometimes marked by a specialized number particle (or number word). This is frequent in Australian and Austronesian languages. An example from Tagalog is the word mga: compare bahay "house" with mga bahay "houses". Tagalog is one of the major languages used in the Philippines. In Kapampangan, certain nouns optionally denote plurality by secondary stress: ing laláki "man" and ing babái "woman" become ding láláki "men" and ding bábái "women". Kapampangan is one of the major Languages of the Philippines.

Obligatoriness 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 or referentially prominent nouns (as with proximate forms in most Algonquian languages, opposed to referentially less prominent obviative forms). Animacy is a grammatical and/or Semantic category of Nouns based on how Sentient or alive the Referent of the noun is

A very common situation is for plural number to not be marked if there is any other overt indication of number, as for example in Hungarian: virág "flower"; virágok "flowers"; hat virág "six flowers". Hungarian ( magyar nyelv) is a Uralic language (more specifically a Ugric language) unrelated to most other languages in Europe.

Number agreement

Verbs

Main article: Grammatical conjugation

In many languages, verbs are conjugated according to number. In Linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a Verb, Noun or Adjective from its Principal parts by Inflection Using French as an example, one says je vois (I see), but nous voyons (we see). The verb voir (to see) changes from vois in the first person singular to voyons in the plural. In everyday English, this often happens in the third person (she sees, they see), but not in other grammatical persons, except with the verb to be.

Adjectives and determiners

Adjectives often agree with the number of the noun they modify. In Grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a Noun or Pronoun, giving more information about the For example, in French, one says un grand arbre [œ̃ gʀɑ̃t aʀbʀ] "a tall tree", but deux grands arbres [dø gʀɑ̃z aʀbʀ] "two tall trees". French ( français,) is a Romance language spoken around the world by 118 million people as a native language and by about 180 to 260 million people The singular adjective grand becomes grands in the plural, unlike English "tall", which remains unchanged.

Other determiners may agree with number. In English, the demonstratives "this", "that" change to "these", "those" in the plural, and the indefinite article "a", "an" is either omitted or changes to "some". Demonstratives are deictic words (they depend on an external frame of reference that indicate which entities a speaker refers to and distinguishes those entities from others In French and German, the definite articles have gender distinctions in the singular but not the plural. In Linguistics, grammatical genders, sometimes also called Noun classes are classes of nouns reflected in the behavior of associated words every noun must belong In Spanish and Portuguese, both definite and indefinite articles are inflected for gender and number, e. g. Portuguese o, a "the" (singular, masc. /fem. ), os, as "the" (plural, masc. /fem. ); um, uma "a(n)" (singular, masc. /fem. ), uns, umas "some" (plural, masc. /fem. )

In the Finnish sentence Yöt ovat pimeitä "Nights are dark", each word referring to the plural noun yöt "nights" ("night" = yö) is pluralized (night-PL is-PL dark-PL-partitive). Finnish ( or suomen kieli) is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland (92% As of 2006) and by ethnic Finns outside The partitive can refer to several things Partitive case partitive meaning of noun phrases The partitive refers to the selection of

Exceptions

See also: Synesis and Plurale tantum

Sometimes, grammatical number will not represent the actual quantity. Synesis (from Greek) means unification meeting sense conscience insight realization mind reason A plurale tantum (plural pluralia tantum) is a noun that appears only in the Plural form and does not have a singular variant though it may still refer For example, in Ancient Greek neuter plurals took a singular verb. The Ancient Greek language is the historical stage in the development of the Hellenic language family spanning the Archaic (c The plural form of a pronoun may also be applied to a single individual as a sign of importance, respect or generality, as in the pluralis majestatis, the T-V distinction, and the generic "you", found in many languages, or, in English, when using the singular "they" for gender-neutrality. The majestic plural ( pluralis majestatis in Latin) is the use of a Plural Pronoun to refer to a single person holding a high office such as In Sociolinguistics, a T-V distinction describes the situation wherein a Language has second-person Pronouns that distinguish varying levels of In English grammar, generic you or indefinite you is the use of the Pronoun You to refer to an unspecified "Singular" they is a popular non-technical expression for uses of the Pronoun they (and its inflected forms when plurality is not

In Arabic, the plural of a non-human noun (one that refers to an animal or to an inanimate entity regardless of whether the noun is grammatically masculine or feminine in the singular) is treated as feminine singular—this is called the inanimate plural. Arabic is a Semitic language See Arabic language for more information on the language in general Animacy is a grammatical and/or Semantic category of Nouns based on how Sentient or alive the Referent of the noun is For example:

رجل جميل (rajul jamīl) 'beautiful/handsome man': rajul (man) is masculine singular, so it takes the masculine singular adjective jamīl.

بيت جميل (bayt jamīl) 'beautiful house': bayt (house) is masculine singular, so it takes the masculine singular jamīl.

كلب جميل (kalb jamīl) 'beautiful dog':kalb (dog) is masculine singular, so it takes the masculine singular jamīl.

بنت جميلة (bint jamīlah) 'beautiful girl': bint is feminine singular, so it takes the feminine singular jamīlah.

سيارة جميلة (sayyārah jamīlah) 'beautiful car': sayyārah is feminine singular, so it takes the feminine singular jamīlah.

رجال جمال (rijāl jimāl) 'beautiful/handsome men': rijāl (men) is masculine plural, so it takes the masculine plural jimāl.

بنات جميلات (banāt jamīlāt) 'beautiful girls': banāt is feminine plural, so it takes the feminine plural jamīlāt.

but

بيوت جميلة (buyūt jamīlah) 'beautiful houses': buyūt (houses) is non-human plural, and so takes the inanimate plural (feminine singular) jamīlah.

سيارات جميلة (sayyārāt jamīlah) 'beautiful cars': sayyārāt is non-human plural, and so takes the inanimate plural jamīlah.

كلاب جميلة (kilāb jamīlah) 'beautiful dogs': kilāb is non-human plural, and so takes the inanimate plural jamīlah.

Collective nouns

Main article: Collective noun

A collective noun is a word that designates a group of objects or beings regarded as a whole, such as "flock", "team", or "corporation". In Linguistics, a collective noun is a word used to define a group of objects where "objects" can be People, Animals Inanimate things Although many languages treat collective nouns as singular, in others they may be interpreted as plural. In British English, phrases such as the committee are meeting are common (the so-called agreement in sensu "in meaning"; with the meaning of a noun, rather than with its form). British English or UK English ( BrE, BE, en-GB) is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the The use of this type of construction varies with dialect and level of formality.

Semantic vs. grammatical number

All languages are able to specify the quantity of referents. They may do so by lexical means with words such as English a few, some, one, two, five hundred. In Linguistics, the lexicon (from Greek Λεξικόν of a language is its Vocabulary, including its words and expressions However, not every language has a grammatical category of number. Grammatical number is expressed by morphological and/or syntactic means. Morphology is the field of Linguistics that studies the internal structure of words In Linguistics, syntax (from Ancient Greek grc συν- syn-, "together" and grc τάξις táxis, "arrangement" is the That is, it is indicated by certain grammatical elements, such as through affixes or number words. An affix is a Morpheme that is attached to a stem to form a word Grammatical number may be thought of as the indication of semantic number through grammar. Semantics is the study of meaning in communication The word derives from Greek σημαντικός ( semantikos) "significant" from Grammar is the field of Linguistics that covers the Rules governing the use of any given natural language.

Languages that express quantity only by lexical means lack a grammatical 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. Khmer (ភាសាខ្មែរ or Cambodian, is the language of the Khmer people and the official language of Cambodia. ^[4].

Auxiliary languages

Auxiliary languages often have fairly simple systems of grammatical number. An international auxiliary language (sometimes abbreviated as IAL or auxlang) or interlanguage is a Language meant for communication between people from In one of the most common schemes (found, for example, in Interlingua and Ido), nouns and pronouns distinguish between singular and plural, but not other numbers, and adjectives and verbs do not display any number agreement. Interlingua is an International auxiliary language (IAL developed between 1937 and 1951 by the International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA Ido (ˈiːdoʊ is a Constructed language created with the goal of becoming a universal second language for speakers of different linguistic backgrounds as a language easier Note however that in Esperanto adjectives must agree in both number and case with the nouns that they qualify. is by far the most widely spoken constructed International auxiliary language in the world

See also

• Count noun
• Elohim
• Generic antecedents
• Grammatical agreement
• Grammatical conjugation
• Grammatical person
• Inflection
• Measure word
• Names of numbers in English
• Noun class
• Number names
• Plurale tantum
• Romance plurals

Notes

Bibliography

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• 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.
• Laycock, Henry. (2005) 'Mass nouns, Count nouns and Non-count nouns' Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Oxford: Elsevier.
• Laycock, Henry. (2006) Words without Objects. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Lunt, Horace G. (1982) Fundamentals of Russian. Revised edition (1968). Reprinted by Slavica Publishers, Columbus Ohio.
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• Mithun, Marianne (1999). The languages of native North America (pp. 81-82, 444-445). Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-23228-7. Cambridge University Press (known colloquially as CUP is a Publisher given a Royal Charter by Henry VIII in 1534
• Sprott, Robert (1992). Jemez syntax. (Doctoral dissertation, University of Chicago, USA). The University of Chicago is a Private university located principally in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago.
• 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. Cambridge University Press (known colloquially as CUP is a Publisher given a Royal Charter by Henry VIII in 1534
• Wonderly, Gibson, and Kirk (1954). Number in Kiowa: Nouns, demonstratives, and adjectives. International Journal of American Linguistics, 20, 1-7.

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