Number: number
| Values: | Coll | Count | Dual | Grpa | Grpl | Inv | Pauc | Plur | Ptan | Sing | Tri |
Number is usually an inflectional feature of nouns and,
depending on language, other parts of speech (pronouns,
adjectives, determiners, numerals,
verbs) that mark agreement with nouns.
In languages where noun phrases are pluralized using a specific function
word (pluralizer), this function word is tagged DET and Number=Plur
is its lexical feature.
Sing: singular number
A singular noun denotes one person, animal or thing.
Examples
- [en] car
Plur: plural number
A plural noun denotes several persons, animals or things.
Examples
- [en] cars
- [yo] àwọn àgùntàn “the sheep (plural)”
- [tl] mga guro “teachers”
Dual: dual number
A dual noun denotes two persons, animals or things.
Examples
- [sl] singular glas “voice”, dual glasova “voices”, plural glasovi “voices”
- [ar] singular سَنَةٌ sanatun “year”, dual سَنَتَانِ sanatāni “years”, plural سِنُونَ sinūna “years”.
Tri: trial number
A trial pronoun denotes three persons, animals or things. It occurs in pronouns of several Austronesian languages, such as Biak.
Examples
- [bhw] sko “they three”
- [bhw] singular ibiser “he is hungry”, dual subiser “they two are hungry”, trial skobiser “they three are hungry”, plural sibiser “they are hungry”
Pauc: paucal number
A paucal noun denotes “a few” persons, animals or things.
Examples
- [wbp] singular karli “boomerang”, paucal karlipatu “a few boomerangs”
Grpa: greater paucal number
A greater paucal noun denotes “more than several but not many” persons, animals or things. It occurs in Sursurunga, an Austronesian language.
Examples
- [sgz] singular iau “I”, dual giur “the two of us”, paucal gimtul “the few of us”, greater paucal gimhat “we”, plural gim “we”
Grpl: greater plural number
A greater plural noun denotes “many, all possible” persons, animals or things. Precise semantics varies across languages.
Examples
- [ff] singular ngesa “field”, plural gese “fields”, greater plural geseeli “many fields”
Inv: inverse number
Inverse number means non-default for that particular noun. (Some nouns are by default assumed to be singular, some dual or plural.) Occurs e.g. in Kiowa.
Examples
- [kio] ę́:dè sân khópdɔ́: “This child is sick.” (basic, singular)
- [kio] ę́:dè sân ę̀khópdɔ́: “These two children are sick.” (basic, dual)
- [kio] ę́:gɔ̀ są̂:dɔ̀ èkhópdɔ́: “These children are sick.” (inverse, plural)
Count: count plural
A special plural form of nouns (and other parts of speech, such as adjectives) if they occur after numerals.
In Bulgarian and Macedonian, this form is known variously as “counting form”,
“count plural” or “quantitative plural” (Sussex and Cubberley 2006, p. 324).
(The form originates in the Proto-Slavic dual but it should not be marked
Number=Dual because 1. the dual vanished from Bulgarian and 2. the form is
no longer semantically tied to the number two.)
Other languages (e.g., Russian) have forms that are not necessarily related to dual, yet they are used exclusively with numerals.
Examples
- [bg] три стола / tri stola “three chairs” vs. столове / stolove “chairs”
- [ru] шага́, шара́, ряда́ / šagá, šará, rjadá “steps, balls, rows”
Ptan: plurale tantum
Some nouns appear only in the plural form even though they denote one
thing (semantic singular); some tagsets mark this distinction.
Grammatically they behave like plurals, so Plur is obviously the
back-off value here; however, if the language also marks gender, the
non-existence of singular form sometimes means that the gender is
unknown. In Czech, special type of numerals is used when counting
nouns that are plurale tantum (NumType = Sets).
Examples
- [en] scissors, pants
- [cs] nůžky, kalhoty
Coll: collective / mass / singulare tantum
Collective or mass or singulare tantum is a special case of singular. It applies to words that use grammatical singular to describe sets of objects, i.e. semantic plural. Although in theory they might be able to form plural, in practice it would be rarely semantically plausible. Sometimes, the plural form exists and means “several sorts of” or “several packages of”.
Examples
- [cs] lidstvo “mankind”
References
- Sussex, Roland and Cubberley, Paul. 2006. The Slavic Languages. Cambridge University Press.
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]