Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why is zero plural? (2024)

ell.stackexchange.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 209 posts

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#191

Post by svachalek »

Phlogistique wrote: post #130
Terr_ wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say steering wheels are "normally capped at 1"... although I recall one distinct occasion where I expected two steering wheels, in a training car for new drivers. Alas, it seemed the local school-district could only afford a car with a second brake-pedal for the instructor, which did very little to help my anxieties. So my first time behind the (singular) wheel and they told me to pull onto a major street next to…

In France, training cars have only one steering wheel, and the instructor is perfectly able to drive the vehicle by steering with his extended left arm.

This is standard in the US as well, probably almost everywhere. But as the comment says, there's always an exception.

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#192

Post by eesmith »

eesmith wrote: post #170
philipwhiuk wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'correct' English is "no books by Hemmingway"

That's "Hemingway" ;) I think the original sentence was already pretty weird, since I wouldn't say "My shelf contains no books." making it hard for me to judge what is not weird. However, "Does your shelf contain a book by Hemingway?" sounds equally correct to "No, my shelf contains no book by Hemingway." And equally correct to "My shelf contains no books."

Upon review, I realized the parallel construction in "No, my shelf contains no book by Hemingway, but it does contain one by Hemmingway" would help smooth things out.

More to the point, https://archive.org/details/stephencranebiog00stal/page/40/m... has this real-world example: "Although Crane’s list of books at Brede Place contains no book by James Fenimore Cooper, he obviously knew his Cooper."

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#193

Post by Umofomia »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #190
Umofomia wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be more accurate, 们 isn't a plural marker more because of the fact that it's not productive[1], rather than the fact that Chinese doesn't have declension. If 们 were able to be suffixed to any noun to make it plural, then you could consider it to be a plural marker, even though the noun isn't technically declined. That's not the case anyway though, since 们 can only be used with a closed set of pronouns or in a limi…

It is productive. It can't pluralize anything, but it can pluralize anything that refers to people and it is actively used in novel ways. I've seen someone refer to 美国的妈妈们; metonymy is not involved there. It just means "American mothers", as distinct from a hypothetical 美国的妈妈 "America's mother". However, the other angle on this is that Mandarin pronouns have singular and plural forms (plurals using 们), and the use of…

When the comment you replied to mentioned "Chinese has gotten by for thousands of years without any plurals at all", I understood it to mean that Chinese has not featured any general system of marking plural by grammatical means[1], which is what is usually understood by the term "plural"[2], not that Chinese has no ability to express a more-than-one count distinction at all (which isn't the case in any language as far as I'm aware).

> It can't pluralize anything, but it can pluralize anything that refers to people and it is actively used in novel ways. I've seen someone refer to 美国的妈妈们; metonymy is not involved there.

It is productive in a limited sense in that way, but not as a general plural marker as you're arguing, and it's limited because 美国的妈妈们 means "American mothers" in that it necessarily refers to them as a collective group (which I argue is an instance of metonymy) rather than a set of more than one "American mother". For instance you cannot say *三个美国的妈妈们 to mean "three American mothers"; you must instead say 三个美国的妈妈 because 美国的妈妈们 can only ever refer to the entire collective group.

> I should note that this argument doesn't entirely hang together. You can make "the White House" explicitly plural in English by giving it a plural verb

This is a feature of UK English where collective nouns agree with plural forms of verbs. US English on the other hand, requires the singular form[3][4]. This has no bearing on how we analyze Chinese.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_number

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural

[3] https://victoryediting.com/collective-nouns/

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_noun#Examples_of_me...

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#194

Post by amilios »

So here's a modern Greek perspective to add to the choir. In modern Greek zero is indeed plural, you would say 0 βαθμοί for example to say 0 degrees. However, in contrast to English:

1.5 books ενάμιση βιβλίο -- singular!

You are functionally saying something closer to "a book and a half" in english I guess! Actually this is an interesting duality in english: 1.5 books but a book and a half. Guess it depends on how "separate" linguistically the numbers are: is it one book and a half book or is it a single quantity? Greek for decimals between 1 and 2 picks the "two quantities" approach.

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#196

Post by ajuc »

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…

We also have a separate case for missing something.

So it's "Mam 3 książki" (I have 3 books) but "Nie mam 3 książek" (I don't have 3 books) or "Brakuje 3 książek" (3 books are missing).

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#198

Post by alterom »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #173
alterom wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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" =…

Same in Russian and Ukrainian in that regard.

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#199

Post by GTP »

cowsandmilk wrote: post #161
GTP wrote: post #155

' “I have no legs” means that I have 0 legs (as opposed to 1 leg or 2 legs), while “I have no leg” means that I have not any leg (i.e., I do not have any leg) ' made me laugh :D Edit: To be honest, I don't see the difference between "I have 0 legs" and "I do not have any leg", can someone explain?

> I do not have any leg I’m not sure what you’re saying, that isn’t grammatically correct.

I took it form one of the Stackexchange answers, I'm not sure what they're trying to say either.
Post reply on HN