Singulative number

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In linguistics, collective number and singulative number are terms used when the grammatical number for a multiple quantity (more than one) is the unmarked form of a noun. An very rough example can be provided in English by the word "snowflake", which is formed from "snow", even though the former designates a part and the latter designates the whole. This is the opposite of the more common situation, where the singular of a noun is unmarked, and the plural is marked. Singulatives are described and explained by Tiersma (1982) and Corbett (2000).

The collective number should not be confused with collective nouns.

[edit] Examples

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 of 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. In this system, nouns form the singular from the plural, by adding the suffix -yn (for masculine nouns) or -en (for feminine nouns): adar "birds/flock of birds" / aderyn "bird"; mefus "a bed of strawberries" / mefusen "a strawberry". The form thus derived is sometimes called the singulative. Most nouns which inflect according to this system designate objects that 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:

  • Tanaka-san "Mr/Ms Tanaka"
  • Tanaka-san-tachi "The Tanakas", "Tanaka & Co.", "Tanaka and friends", etc.

Singulative markers are commonly used in Nilotic and Surmic languages. Majang: ŋεεti-n 'louse', ŋεεti 'lice' (Bender 1983:124).

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  • Bender, M. Lionel. 1983. Majang phonology and morphology. In Nilo-Saharan Language Studies, 114-147. East Lansing: Michigan State University.
  • Corbett, Greville G. 2000. Number. Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics. Cambridge University Press.
  • Tiersma, Peter Meijes. 1982. Local and General Markedness. Language 58.4: 832-849