Hi,
This is an appeal to all of you who are better at English than I am, as it's the sort of topic that is notoriously hard to search on Google for.
Clearly any number of items above one requires a plural - for example, 5 days. Equally clearly, any number of items that equals one requires a singular, 1 day. This is where things begin to get sticky: What happens below 1? Why at zero deos it become plural again, zero/no days? What about between zero and one? And with negative numbers, is the pattern mirrored?
Thanks to anyone who can solve this grammatical dilemma!
Chris
Numbers which relate to a singular or plural
You're a little like God's understudy (I mean our lord Harvey of course), needing to know the finer points of the English language in an attempt to be looked upon favourably should the need for a replacement ever arise!cdd wrote:No, it's only me... just because you may be uncertain wehther the "real" one will be around this one you don't need to use me as a temporary substitute...Sput wrote:GOD!
Merry Christmas!
Knight knight
I think it's quite annoying how all the kids say "reindeers".cdd wrote:Hi,
This is an appeal to all of you who are better at English than I am, as it's the sort of topic that is notoriously hard to search on Google for.
Clearly any number of items above one requires a plural - for example, 5 days. Equally clearly, any number of items that equals one requires a singular, 1 day. This is where things begin to get sticky: What happens below 1? Why at zero deos it become plural again, zero/no days? What about between zero and one? And with negative numbers, is the pattern mirrored?
Thanks to anyone who can solve this grammatical dilemma!
Chris
As you're a temp for God, perhaps you can wheel out his TVF "sheeps" then. Stupid fucking South Shields morons.
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DVB Cornwall
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from ...The Austronesian language Sursurunga has singular, dual, paucal, greater paucal, and plural. Lihir, another Austronesian language, has singular, dual, trial, paucal, and plural. These are probably languages with the most complex number. Reports on existence of quadral (four) are considered false.
However, numbers besides singular, plural, and to a lesser extent dual, are extremely rare. Furthermore, languages with noun classifiers such as Chinese and Japanese lack any significant grammatical number at all. They are likely to have plural personal pronouns though.
Languages having only a singular and plural form may still differ in their treatment of zero. For example, in English, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, the plural form is used for zero or more than one, and the singular for one thing only. By contrast, in French and Brazilian Portuguese, the singular form is used for zero. Some languages, such as Latvian, have a special form--the nullar--for zero, as well as the singular and plural, as discussed above.
Also, an interesting difference from Romance/Germanic languages is found in some Slavic and Baltic languages. Here, the final digits of the number determine its form. For example, Polish has singular and plural, and a special form for numbers where the last digit is 2,3 or 4, and the second last digit is not 1. Slovenian has one form for numbers congruent to 1 modulo 100, another for numbers congruent to 2 modulo 100, another for numbers congruent to either 3 or 4 modulo 100, and another form for all other numbers. In Croatian (in addition to the Polish 2,3,4), there is a plural for counting and a plural for not-counting. For example, there are two ways to say leaves: "lišće" is used in "Leaves are falling from the trees", but "listovi" is used in "Those are some beautiful leaves". The first plural is the more commonly used, and in general the two plurals are used with natural objects.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural
Hope that clarifies the matter (but fears that it may complicate it further!)
