The Category Of Number

This category indicates whether one or more things is meant. Oneness is expressed by singular and more-than-oneness by plural forms.

All English nouns have form which corresponds to the structural type of the singular or plural. But not all of them have the grammatical category of number. Only count nouns are inflected for it. Only these nouns indicate whether the noun names one or more than one referent, that is,are used in both numbers.

Grammatical numbers of English nouns are the singular and the plural. The basic form is the singular.The plural of almost all the counts is built by adding the inflexion -/e/s to the basic form /singular form/. In speech this inflexion is related in 3 variants:

/s/, /z/, /iz/ depending upon the character of the preceding sound

• /s/ occurs after voiceless consonants,
• /z/ after voiced consonants and vowels,
• /iz/ after sibilants
• /s/ cup-cups

cat –cats

/z/ bag-bags

boy-boys

/iz/ bus-buses

rose-roses

bush-bushes

match-matches

In nouns with the final –y preceded by a consonant –y changes into –i. The plural ending is –es

Study-studies

Lobby-lobbies

A small number of nouns have irregular plurals. They are

• Man-men
• Woman-woman
• Goose-geese
• Foot-feet
• Tooth-teeth
• Mouse-mice
• Louse-lice
• Child-children
• Ox-oxen

In a number of nouns having a sound /f/ in the singular/spelled –f of –fe/ this sound changes into /v/ in the plural form and the ending –es is added.

Knife-knives

Leaf-leaves

Life-lives

Loaf-loaves

Shelf-shelves

Wife-wives

Wolf-wolves

There is no change of the sound in the plural of the nouns roof,proof,safe. Both variants are found in the nouns handkerchieves /-fs/,hoof-hooves/hoofs/, scarf-scarfs /ves/

The formation of the plural of nouns ending in / -o/

The plural of these nouns is built up by adding to the singular form the inflexion

/-es/ hero-heroes Negro-Negroes,tomato-tomatoes,potato-potatoes

/-s/ in:

• nouns ending in 2 vowels / radio-radios,zoo-zoos/
• in shortenings / photo-photos,kilo-kilos /
• in musical terms of Italian origin / solo-solos,piano-pianos/

Agreement By agreement we mean a method of expressing a syntactical relationship, which consists in making the subordinate word take a form similar to that of the word to which it is subordinate. In Modern English this can refer only to the category of number: a subordinate word agrees in number with its head word if it has different, number forms at all.1 This is practically found in two words only, the pronouns this and that, which agree in number with their head word. Since no other word, to whatever part of speech it may belong, agrees in number with its head word, these two pronouns stand quite apart in the Modern English syntactical system. As to the problem of agreement of the verb with the noun or pronoun denoting the subject of the action (a child plays, children play), this is a controversial problem. Usually it is treated as agreement of the predicate with the subject, that is, as a phenomenon of sentence structure. However, if we assume (as we have done) that agreement and government belong to the phrase level, rather than to the sentence level, and that phrases of the pattern "noun + + verb" do exist, we have to treat this problem in this chapter devoted to phrases. The controversy is this. Does the verb stand, say, in the plural number because the noun denoting the subject of the action is plural, so that the verb is in the full sense of the word subordinate to the noun? Or does the verb, in its own right, express by its category of number the singularity or plurality of the doer (or doers)?2 There are some phenomena in Modern English which would seem to show that the verb does not always follow the noun in the category of number. Such examples as, My family are early risers, on the one hand, and The United Nations is an international organisation, on the other, prove that the verb can be independent of the noun in this respect: though the noun is in the singular, the verb may be in the plural, if the doer is understood to be plural; though the noun is plural, the verb may be singular if the doer is understood to be singular. Examples of such usage are arguments in favour of the view that there is no agreement in number of the verb with the noun expressing the doer of the action. The fact that sentences like My family is small, and My family are early risers exist side by side proves that there is no agreement of the verb with the noun in either case: the verb shows whether the subject of the action is to be thought of as singular or plural, no matter what the category of number in the noun may be. Thus, the sphere of agreement in Modern English is extremely small: it is restricted to two pronouns — this and that, which agree with their head word in number when they are used in front of it as the first components of a phrase of which the noun is the centre.