Grammatical versus Notional Number

Grammatical number is a property of linguistic expressions whereas notional num-ber is a property of non-linguistic entities. Grammatical and notional numnum-ber usually coincide: A grammatically singular noun phrase refers to a single entity

4The data are available online at http://wals.info/feature/34.

in the world, a plural noun phrase refers to multiple entities. Richer number sys-tems provide a more fine-grained division. But grammatical and notional num-ber do not always go hand in hand. Things that are perceptually conceived as a singleton can be lexicalized as plural forms (e.g., scissors, trousers). At the same time, singular forms can refer to collections of entities sharing one property (e.g., orchestra). Mass nouns like water are another noun class for which notional number and grammatical number diverge. Since these cases received considerable attention in the discussion of agreement both in the theoretical literature and the psycholinguistic literature, they will be considered in some more detail below.

Summation Plurals

So-calledSUMMATION PLURALS are nouns which are formally plural words but denote singleton objects. They often refer to entities with symmetrical parts, mainly tools and instruments (e.g., scissors, pliers, binoculars, glasses) and clothes (e.g., trousers, pants, pajamas). Thus, there might be a transparent relation be-tween the formal plurality and some kind of conceptual plurality. One could ar-gue that these nouns refer to the two parts which form the object—the two cutting edges of a pair of scissors or the two trouser legs in the case of trousers. And indeed, historically this seems to be true, at least for some nouns in this class.

An example is the German equivalent of trousers: Hose originally denoted a sin-gle piece of a pair of chausses which were put on in addition to some kind of short pants. Later on both clothes were unified to what German speakers call now Hose (Kluge, 1999). The plural usage survived in some idioms as shown in the examples below.⁵

‘to be in a generous mood’

b. die

‘to be in charge’ (equivalent to ‘to wear the trousers/breeches’) c. die

‘to be scared’ (equivalent to ‘to be in a blue funk’) d. Das

‘He lost his courage’ (equivalent to ‘his heart sank into his boots’)

5Some people consider the plural form in (4d) to be old-fashioned.

Although there might be a historical footprint of plurality, contemporary speakers show a strong tendency to perceive such bipartite objects as singleton objects.

The first piece of evidence comes from the observation that the very same objects are lexicalized as normal count nouns in other languages or varieties. Take for instance the summation plural noun tweezers in British English: The German equivalent is Pinzette, the American English equivalent is tweezer. Both nouns are singular nouns and have plural counterparts (Pinzetten in German, tweezers in American English). Even within a given language, very similar objects are sometimes lexicalized as summation plural and sometimes not (compare scissors and shear, wire cutter).

Furthermore, summation plurals tend to be reanalyzed as notionally and gram-matically singular as observed by the loss of the plural marker. The lexical dif-ference between American and British English mentioned above (tweezer versus tweezers) can be interpreted this way. Mervis and Johnson (1991) have shown that children tend to reconstruct summation plurals as formally singular entities. Bock and Eberhard (1993) report that even adults occasionally delete the plural ending.

The same tendency can be observed diachronically as well.

Mass Nouns

In a way, MASS NOUNS (e.g., furniture, pasta, equipment) constitute something like a counterpart of summation plurals. While formally singular, they have se-mantically much in common with plural nouns. They exhibit what Quine (1960) calls “the semantic property of referring cumulatively”.⁶ Insofar, they resemble collective nouns which will be discussed subsequent to the present discussion.

The term MASS NOUNS can be traced back at least to Jespersen (1924)⁷, the opposing class is calledCOUNT NOUNS. While the basic distinction is intuitively clear—count nouns denote discriminable and therefore countable things, mass nouns denote undifferentiated stuff—the topic is rather complex and the literature is accordingly substantial (an introduction to the discussion within philosophy is given in Pelletier, 1979 and Pelletier and Schubert, 1989; an overview of the dis-cussion within formal semantics is offered by Krifka, 1991, see also Bunt, 1985;

Higginbotham, 1995; Laycock, 2005). Part of the problem is that the same ter-minology is used for related but not identical phenomena. Within philosophy, the mass–count distinction is often thought to be of metaphysical or ontological relevance whereas within linguistics is it seen as a property of linguistic expres-sions, although the type of expression (lexical words/single terms or syntactic

6In a footnote, he mentions that he would like to use the term ‘collective term’ instead of ‘mass term’ if this did not provoke associations with nouns like herd, army etc. - that is with the class of nouns often termed ‘collective nouns’.

7Jespersen contrasts ‘mass words’ (‘uncountables’) with ‘thing words’ (‘countables’).

phrases/complex terms) is an issue of debate.

Mass nouns typically refer to substances, that is liquids like water or blood, substances or elements like wood or gold and stuff like dust. From an ontolog-ical point of view, the referent of a mass noun does not qualify as an object (cf.

Laycock, 2006). The critical criterion seems to be the boundedness or divisibility of the referent. The referent of a mass term has usually no clear boundaries and remains intact after division. The referent of a count noun, in contrast, usually has clear boundaries and its division equals destruction. The division of water or dust gives still water, respectively dust. The division of a book is no longer a book, but pieces of paper (a loose leaf collection in the best case).⁸ The same is true for summation: Water and water yields water, but two apples do not add up to an-other apple. From a linguistic point of view, the mass–count distinction concerns the conceptualization and lexicalization of entities, not their physical structure.

Thus, the mass–count distinction applies to linguistic expressions⁹rather than to their referents. A mass noun can refer to entities that can be counted (e.g., the individual noodles in the case of pasta), but these entities are not relevant for the concept of the according noun.

The most prominent linguistic difference between count nouns and mass nouns is related to the plural meaning. The plural form of a count noun denotes a set of instances (e.g., apples denotes a set of individual apples), whereas the plural form of a mass noun is either illicit *golds, *silvers or denotes a set of kinds (e.g., wines denotes a set of several types of wine). Further differences concern modification by a numeral (two apples but *two dusts) and the use of an indefinite article (an apple but *a dust). Again, there are certain uses of mass nouns with a numeral or an indefinite article but they involve a semantic change (‘recategorization’, cf.

Corbett, 2000; or ‘reclassification’, cf. Quirk et al., 1985).

Collective Nouns

Another noun class for which notional and grammatical number can diverge is constituted byCOLLECTIVE NOUNSlike family or orchestra (for a critical review of the term ‘collective noun’ see Corbett, 2000). But unlike summation plurals and mass nouns, collective nouns are not consistently defective. Most collective nouns have both singular and plural forms. The singular forms are the interest-ing case; despite their formal sinterest-ingularity they denote a perceptual plurality of

8The division test does not always yield such clear results. There are objects which parts are still of the same type: if we break apart a noodle we get two noodles, if we cut apart a twine or a cord we have two of them. This is different from the division of a substance like water.

9Usually, the mass–count distinction is seen as a lexical distinction. Allan (1980) criticizes this view and argues that the mass–count distinction applies to noun phrases rather than to individual nouns.

individuals (mainly animates)—a collection. In the singular, collective nouns are ambiguous between a distributive reading that refers to the individual members of that collection, and an assembly reading that refers to the collection as a whole, e.g., a family as a unit. This means that collective nouns are notionally number ambiguous. The plural form refers to a collection of collections, i.e. a plurality of items which themselves are collections of several items sharing a property.

Collective nouns do not behave uniformly with respect to the mass–count dis-tinction (for German see Kuhn, 1982). As mentioned above most but not all col-lective nouns have plural forms. Plural formation is not the only test on which collective nouns behave non-uniformly. Some more tests are provided below.

(5) plural formation/plural meaning a. count nouns: apples, bees

b. mass nouns: *silvers, metals (sortal)

c. collective nouns: swarms, families;^?staffs,^?publics (6) use of indefinite article

a. count nouns: an apple, a bee b. mass nouns: *a silver, a metal

c. collective nouns: a swarm, a family; *a staff, a public (7) modification by a numeral

a. count nouns: two apples, two bees

b. mass nouns: *two silvers, two metals (sortal)

c. collective nouns: two swarms, two families; *two staffs, *two publics (8) modification by many vs. much

a. count nouns: many apples/*much apple, many bees/*much bee b. mass nouns: *many/much silver, metals (sortal)

c. collective nouns: many swarms/*much swarm, many families/*much family;^?many staffs/^?much staff, *many publics/*much public

A further oddity of collective nouns is their behavior with respect to number agree-ment. There is quite some variability both within and across languages. German, for instance, requires a singular verb in the context of a singular collective noun in subject function but allows both a singular and a plural pronoun picking up the referent of this noun. English, in contrast, shows optionality for both verbs and pronouns—though there are differences across English varieties (cf. Bock et al., 2006; Levin, 2001)—but consistently requires a singular determiner. I will come back to this issue when discussing number agreement.