Number: number
Number is an inflectional feature of nouns and other parts of speech (adjectives, verbs) that mark agreement with nouns.
In Turkish, nouns (NOUN, PROPN, PRON) and verbs (VERB, AUX) may have the feature Number.
Note that the number agreement between a subject noun and the predicate is not straightforward.
Plural nouns agree with predicates with both singular and plural marking,
but singular nouns disagree with predicates with plural marking.
When a subject is explicit, the singular form of the verb is preferred.
Otherwise, the person/number agreement marker indicates the Number feature of the subject (as well as Person).
In case plurality is indicated by a modifier (e.g., NUM), the noun does not get an explicit plural marker (see example 2 for Sing).
We mark Number=Plur only if there is an explicit morphological marker.
The Number feature should not be confused with Number[psor],
which indicates the whether the possessor of a noun is singular or plural.
Sing: singular number
A single person or thing. There is no morphological marker for singular for nouns and verbs in 3rd person singular form.
Examples
- бер алма “one/an apple”
- өч алма “three apples” – note the missing plural marker. *өч алмалар is ungrammatical.
- укыдым “(I) read (Past)”
Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin
Plur: plural number
More than one person or thing. On nouns plurality is indicated by suffix -лар/ләр. Plurality on verbs is indicated by a person/number suffix which varies depending on its preceding suffixes.
Examples
- алмалар “apples”
- укыдык ‘(We) read-PAST’
Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin - Укучылар китап укыячак(лар) “The students will read books” – the plural marker on the verb is optional.
- Китап укыячаклар “(They) will read books” – Plurality of the subject is inferred from the agreement marker on the verb.
Number in other languages: [ab] [arr] [bej] [bg] [bm] [bor] [cs] [cy] [el] [en] [es] [ess] [eu] [fi] [fr] [ga] [gn] [gub] [hbo] [hu] [hy] [it] [ka] [ky] [myv] [orv] [pcm] [ps] [pt] [qpm] [ru] [sl] [sv] [tpn] [tr] [tt] [u] [uk] [urb] [urj] [xcl]