Collective number

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In linguistics, collective number is a number referring to a set of things. Languages that have this feature can use it to get a phrase like 'flock of sheep' by using 'sheep' in collective number.

Welsh has two systems of grammatical number. Singular/plural nouns correspond to the singular/plural number system of English. Welsh noun plurals are unpredictable and formed in several ways: by adding a suffix to the end fo the word (usually -au), e.g. tad and tadau, through vowel mutation, e.g. bachgen and bechgyn, or through a combination of the two, e.g. chwaer and chwiorydd.

The other system of number is the collective/unit system. The nouns in this system form the singular by adding the suffix -yn (for masculine nouns) or -en (for feminine nouns) to the plural. Most nouns which belong in this system are frequently found in groups, for example, plant "children" and plentyn "a child", or coed "forest" and coeden "a tree". In dictionaries, the plural is often given first.

Some languages have collectives but no grammatical plural. For example, Chinese, Japanese (except in a small number of cases), and Korean do not have plurals. However, groups of people can be referred to, either by context or periphrastically (i.e., with additional words or phrases).

An example from Japanese: