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Why is zero plural? (2024)
31–40 of 209 posts
Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)
#32I think it extends from whatever rules govern the much-more-influential word "No", particularly for items which aren't normally capped at 1. Notice how these are all plural , and in each case "no" could be substituted with "zero": * "My shelf contains no books." * "Snails have no legs." * "What if there were no stars in the sky?" You can't simply replace those examples with a singular noun: You're either forced to re…
> You can't naively rewrite those examples with a singular "What if there was no star in the sky?" does not sound particularly weird, and we can find instances of people using that exact phrase. If we focus on the key aspect of that statement, "no star in the sky" appears to be commonly used.
> "What if there was no star in the sky?" does not sound particularly weird
I disagree: The most-charitable scenario I can think of is that someone has context-shifted from regular "stars" to "our sun, Sol, which is technically a star even though we typically consider it separate from the rest."
In other words, it involves a situation where someone is assuming the amount is capped at 1. (Yes, I know binary stars exist.)
Compare:
* "What if there was no star for Earth to orbit?" [Works because =1 is the normal assumption in this context]
* "What if there was no star in the night sky?" [This is weird.]
* "What if there was no constellation?" [This is also weird.]
Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)
#33Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)
#34There is no spoon
"I have no spoon." Correct in a situation where exactly one spoon is expected.
"There are no spoons here." Correct in a situation where there could be zero, one or more spoons.
Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)
#35Because speakers of English arrived at the arbitrary decision that it is.
Whenever you're faced with the question: "why is x y?", you should ask yourself "is x y?". In this case, zero is plural... in English. But not in all languages! (I think in Arabic zero is singular.)
You can read about plural rules in different languages here[1]. For example some languages have three numbers: singular, dual, and plural. This is what Proto Indo European had and some descendants still do. Have you ever found it weird how "pants" or "glasses" are kinda plural but also kinda singular?
An interesting table to look at is here[2]. It compares all the rules in various languages for how to form cardinals. For example, English has two numbers: singular and plural and two rules to determine it: `n == 1`, `n != 1`.
My language, Romanian, also has only singular and plural, but we have three different categories: singular, plural without "of", plural with "of": `n == 1`, `n != 1 && n % 100 == 1..19`, `...the remaining cases...`. So we say "3319 horses", but "3320 of horses". It's very weird, but that's how languages work.
[1]: https://cldr.unicode.org/index/cldr-spec/plural-rules [2]: https://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/46/supplemental/language...
Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)
#36Because zero is not singular.
If you take singular as equal to 1 and plural as the opposite of singular it‘s obvious
Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You can't naively rewrite those examples with a singular "What if there was no star in the sky?" does not sound particularly weird, and we can find instances of people using that exact phrase. If we focus on the key aspect of that statement, "no star in the sky" appears to be commonly used.
> "What if there was no star in the sky?" does not sound particularly weird I disagree: The most-charitable scenario I can think of is that someone has context-shifted from regular "stars" to "our sun, Sol, which is technically a star even though we typically consider it separate from the rest." In other words, it involves a situation where someone is assuming the amount is capped at 1. (Yes, I know binary stars exis…
> I disagree
With what? English is defined by use, and we can find untold examples of "No star in the sky."
Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)
#38The answer says zero is treated as "plural" because we say "0 books". Interestingly, we can say either: 1. "There are no books on this subject" 2. "There is no book on this subject"
I was thinking of this too, oddly, also examples around books.
I vaguely feel like “no book” could also be parsed as… not one book, maybe? Like we’re saying there isn’t even one book on the subject. Maybe?
I dunno. The scenario that popped into my head was: what if you had a bookshop, where the shopkeeper would sometimes pick out books for you. If they said “I have no books for you today,” I’d imagine that they just generally didn’t find any books for you. Meanwhile if they said “I have no book for you today,” I guess I’d expect that you are waiting for a particular book, and it didn’t come in today. Somehow, there is a difference between the absence of a book and the absence of any books, even though in fact there are zero books in either case.
Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)
#39Funny that 1 litre is singular but 1.0 lires is plural even though 1.0 is more precisely singular than 1. IOW, English is screwy
It’s the same in German.
Not for liter because the German Liter is also its plural form.
Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)
#40[flagged]
I rather like Greek for having a dual form as well as a singular and plural form. (Translators made me add dual-form messages as well as singular and plural form messages).
Slovenian has four plural forms and Arabic has _six_. Here's a nice list with details and rules: https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/Plural...