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Why is zero plural? (2024)

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Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#171

Post by thaumasiotes »

sbelskie wrote: post #144
Archelaos wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Question from someone whose native language is not English. I often come across sentences that combine "There is no" with a plural direct object, such as: "There is no books on this subject" Is this also correct English?

Not in standard American English to the best of my knowledge, but it’s not impossible some dialects use this construction.

American English is shifting strongly in the direction of always using "is" when the subject is dummy "there".

It's also shifting to using schwa rather than FLEECE in "the" when it is followed by a vowel.

On the internet, the -en form of verbs seems to be disappearing entirely, with constructions like "I should have went [wherever]".

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#172

Post by taeric »

I'm curious how much of the answer to this is simply because it sounds nicer? That is, the search is largely for technical reasons for something to be so. But, couldn't it just as realistically be that it is an aesthetic path that leads to this?

I see one of the comments says it rolls off the tongue nicely. I feel that that is far far more of the reason than people are opting for in the rest of the discussions.

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#173

Post by TeMPOraL »

alterom wrote: post #152
TeMPOraL wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The moment you use a fraction, the assumption is that you would need to count all I guess, so it’s treated as individual objects. I always explained it to myself that, when you use a fraction, you're focusing on that one incomplete object, also calling more attention to the individuality of objects in the set. So in case of say, "100.5 książki", I like to imagine shoving ~95 books into the box very quickly, then sl…

Interesting. It's the opposite in Russian — it'd be "100½ książek" there (сто c половиной книжек), even though it's "½ książki" (половина книжки). "½ książek" (половина книжек) is also valid, and it means "half of (all the) books". But in "100½", it's the whole number that determines the ending (i.e. case) of the word.

FWIW, both "½ książek" and "½ książki" are valid Polish, but they mean different things:

- "½ książek" == "połowa książek" == "half of the books", and refers to half of some set, e.g. "połowa książek spadła z półki", "half of the books fell off the shelf". It gets tricky when the set turns out to contain only one book, but that's not spelling/grammar issue anymore.

- "½ książki" == "pół książki" or "połowa książki" == "half of the book", as in "pierwszap połowa tej książki jest nudna", "the first half of this book is boring". There's some difference between "pół" and "połowa" that makes them not interchangeable in most cases, but I don't feel confident enough to articulate a rule here.

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#174

Post by Muromec »

locallost wrote: post #137
kolinko wrote: post #98

Fun fact - in Polish we have separate forms for 1 (singular), 2-4 (plural but nit many) and everything else. Zero is in “everything else” 0 książek 0.5 książki 1 książka 2,3,4 książki 2.5 książki 5 and above książek 5.5 (any other fraction) książki >100 and a fraction - depends Singular is for one. The first plural is for things kind of treated as individual objects. The second plural is for things that are treated a…

It's the same or similar in many if not all Slavic languages. Just goes to show true internationalization in software is almost impossible because you don't know all the rules in all the languages of the world. E.g. if you treat numbers as singular like English does you will have difficulty with Polish because you were unaware it has a special case for 2-4. And then you can have a third language that handles 2-7 diff…

You just do (p)ngettext. It works if care for it to work and proofread the interface instead of raw files.

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#175

Post by andrewla »

taeric wrote: post #172

I'm curious how much of the answer to this is simply because it sounds nicer? That is, the search is largely for technical reasons for something to be so. But, couldn't it just as realistically be that it is an aesthetic path that leads to this? I see one of the comments says it rolls off the tongue nicely. I feel that that is far far more of the reason than people are opting for in the rest of the discussions.

That it sounds nicer is equivalent to saying that a native speaker uses it this way. There's no why to it; language evolves based on how it is used. The aesthetics are downstream of the fact that this is the way that native speakers use it.

The question is whether there is a rule that we can use to determine the correct way to modify the noun which it modifies. And the answer is ... sort of?

As an argument against the pure aesthetic argument (in the sense that maybe the usage of it is driven by superior aesthetics) we can find some counterexamples. We can say "there are zero marks on this ruler" and we can also say "here is the zero mark on this ruler". Both of these sentences make perfect sense and are immediately parsable by a native speaker. "There is zero mark on this ruler" and "here is the zero marks on this ruler" are clearly both wrong. The difference here is that in one case we are using "zero" to refer to a quantity and in the other to a non-quantity.

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#176

Post by taeric »

andrewla wrote: post #175
taeric wrote: post #172

I'm curious how much of the answer to this is simply because it sounds nicer? That is, the search is largely for technical reasons for something to be so. But, couldn't it just as realistically be that it is an aesthetic path that leads to this? I see one of the comments says it rolls off the tongue nicely. I feel that that is far far more of the reason than people are opting for in the rest of the discussions.

That it sounds nicer is equivalent to saying that a native speaker uses it this way. There's no why to it; language evolves based on how it is used. The aesthetics are downstream of the fact that this is the way that native speakers use it. The question is whether there is a rule that we can use to determine the correct way to modify the noun which it modifies. And the answer is ... sort of? As an argument against th…

Sort of? The aesthetics are almost certainly driven by other factors, including what phonemes are used. Is why "ya'll" is a word in the south. It isn't like we didn't know how to say "you all" or other similar words. Aesthetically, contracting those into a single word was more pleasant for many people.

So, my argument is that you are looking at the words and distinguishing the singular/plural aspect as driving why we say certain things. I'm saying that you can use a phoneme argument for why "there is a zero mark" sounds correct and meaningful, whereas "there is zero marking on this ruler" starts to stretch it.

That is, allow me to rephrase my assertion. Rather than saying there is an aesthetic argument, I'm asserting that the phonemes involved are a larger driver than is given credit. Often with grammar rules backfilled to solidify choices.

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#177

Post by lloeki »

Xmd5a wrote: post #153
whycome wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

French, which treats zero as a singular I believe has a weird way of saying "no one" Personne on its own means ''no one'', but une personne means a person.

And "rien" (nothing) used to mean something (via latin "res")

"Un petit rien" => a small thing

Typically used in "les petits riens de la vie", meaning the small things in life that may be overlooked but constitute the true things that make it worth living.

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#178

Post by zdragnar »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #165
retrac wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term in linguistics for a category of 3 or 4 things is "paucal". Most languages with a paucal separate 2 from 3 or 4, resulting in four noun categories/forms by number: singular (1), dual (2), paucal (3 - 4? a few?) and plural (5+). That's quite a common pattern among the world's languages. Polish and the other Slavic languages with this feature are a little unusual in not having the separate dual. A few language…

> Chinese has gotten by for thousands of years without any plurals at all. Chinese has plurals; 们 has no other use.

Counting words and 们 aren't the same, as they aren't declensions. You add on the syllable rather than actually changing the syllable of the noun itself.

Granted, that's still different from saying that Mandarin doesn't have a concept of plural, but I think the underlying point- no conjugation or declension- is very different from the other languages being discussed.

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#179

Post by axegon_ »

Tainnor wrote: post #160
axegon_ wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I speak Spanish, but it's a different story there: "dos doses, zero treses y un cinco". Numbers can have plurals, which from what I understand is not the case in Italian. Weird cause the languages are very similar in general - I can somewhat easily understand Italian, particularly reading. Listening - not so much. But as far as grammar, they seem to be almost identical. Same with French grammar though Spanish has the…

Linguistically, Spanish and French are Western Romance languages and technically should be closer to each other than Spanish and Italian. However, French also underwent certain significant changes (possibly due to Germanic and/or Celtic influence) that most other Romance languages didn't, hence why it seems more "foreign". But there are a lot of common things between French and Spanish that Italian doesn't share (e.g…

Well yeah... But overall numbers in French are a bit... Weird... By the time you are a teenager, you have the math skills of someone with a PhD in Calculus just to be able to say how old you are. No wonder some of the best mathematicians in history were French ;)
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