Certain natural languages function entirely without grammatical plural markings.
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Peer-reviewed research and reference data on grammatical number establish that certain natural languages function entirely without grammatical plural markings.
All natural languages have formal devices for communicating about number, be they lexical (e.g., two, many) or grammatical (e.g., plural markings on nouns and/or verbs). Here we ask whether linguistic devices for number arise in communication systems that have not been handed down from generation to generation. We examined deaf individuals who had not been exposed to a usable model of conventional language (signed or spoken), but had nevertheless developed their own gestures, called homesigns, to communicate. Study 1 examined four adult homesigners and a hearing communication partner for each homesigner. The adult homesigners produced two main types of number gestures: gestures that enumerated sets (cardinal number marking), and gestures that signaled one vs. more than one (non-cardinal number marking). Both types of gestures resembled, in form and function, number signs in established sign languages and, as such, were fully integrated into each homesigner's gesture system and, in this sense, linguistic. The number gestures produced by the homesigners’ hearing communication partners displayed some, but not all, of the homesigners’ linguistic patterns. To better understand the origins of the patterns displayed by the adult homesigners, Study 2 examined a child homesigner and his hearing mother, and found that the child's number gestures displayed all of the properties found in the adult homesigners’ gestures, but his mother's gestures did not. The findings suggest that number gestures and their linguistic use can appear relatively early in homesign development, and that hearing communication partners are not likely to be the source of homesigners’ linguistic expressions of non-cardinal number. Linguistic devices for number thus appear to be so fundamental to language that they can arise in the absence of conventional linguistic input.
In linguistics, grammatical number is a feature, in many languages, of nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions
In linguistics, grammatical number is a feature, in many languages, of nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one", "two" or "three or more"). English and many other languages present number categories of singular or plural. Some languages also have a dual, trial and paucal number or other arrangements.
The word "number" is also used in linguisti
In linguistics, grammatical number is a feature, in many languages, of nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one", "two" or "three or more"). English and many other languages present number categories of singular or plural. Some languages also have a dual, trial and paucal number or other arrangements.
The word "number" is also used in linguistics to describe the distinction between certain grammatical aspects that indicate the number of times an event occurs, such as the semelfactive aspect, the iterative aspect, etc. For that use of the term, see "Grammatical aspect".
sa – "dog" (singular)
sa'unima – "two dogs" (dual)
sasinima – "dogs" (plural)
sahchi – "pack of dogs" (collective plural)
The collective may be limited to just a small subset of nouns, like in Kujireray, where it can only be used with certain insects and small objects: enipora, fly; sinipora, flies; and banipora, swarm of flies. Just like the distributive, the collective can also change the meaning of verbs, as in Panyjima: karri, to stand, and karrinyayi, to stand together. In Vaeakau-Taumako, the collective is indicated through different articles: te tai, the person; ngha tai, the people; and a tai, the group of people.
The collective presents similar issues as the distributive in its potential classification as grammatical number, including the fact that some languages allow both collective and plural markers on the same words. Adding a collective to a plural word does not change the number of referents, only how those referents are conceptualized.
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