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Why is zero plural? (2024)

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Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#41

Post by bee_rider »

Terr_ wrote: post #14

I 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…

“My shelf contains no book” almost wants to become “my shelf contains no such book!” to my eye. Like the book is cursed or forbidden, haha.

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#42

Post by thayne »

egypturnash wrote: post #30
thayne wrote: post #21

None of the answers give a really satisfactory answer for the underlying reason. I have a theory, although I don't have any evidence. Zero is arelatively recent concept, and probably became part of the language after the rules for pluralization were well established. So when zero came into use it was used similar to negating a plural, like "no widgets" or "not any widgets", so the plural was used. Or maybe it felt un…

Wikipedia tells me that the first known usage of "zero" in English was 1598, certainly well after the rules for plurals were set. Wikipedia also tells me that people started speaking what we now call Old English around 450, and also tells me that there were examples of something close to the idea of "zero" going back as far as 1770BC, although the usual history of "zero" in English just goes back to borrowing it from…

> there were examples of something close to the idea of "zero" going back as far as 1770BC

Ah, yes, I was thinking of in Europe, and as a number, but I failed to specify that.

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#43

Post by bee_rider »

9rx wrote: post #20
Terr_ wrote: post #14

I 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.

It is possible I’ve made a completely imaginary link, but “no star in the sky” sounds slightly odd but in a poetic way. In particular “no star” seems pretty close to “not a star.” I mean, zero stars is technically zero stars.

But if someone says “There was no star in the sky,” I parse that as something like: An astonishingly dark night, I searched the sky quite carefully and found not even one star.

Meanwhile I parse “no stars in the sky” as: a very dark night, I didn’t see any stars.

Of course really, it is always a matter of degree technically, right? The stars are always there. They are just sometimes attenuated to the point where your eye doesn’t detect them.

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#44

Post by OJFord »

More interesting is to compare languages. Other than native English, I only know Hindi (plural zero) and French (singular zero).

I wonder what and why the divide is, perhaps especially when among these three at least I believe zero has a common conceptual origin in al-Khvārizmī (post Roman).

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#45

Post by Terr_ »

9rx wrote: post #37
Terr_ wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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."

> we can find untold examples

"All birds have eyes" != "All things that have eyes are birds."

My hypothesis is that wherever we speak about "zero" and some quantity, it seems like we can substitute "no", and the pluralization rules we'd use for "no" are being inherited.

In contrast, it sounds like you're going the opposite direction, starting with sentences that contain "no" where we cannot drop-in "zero". For example, "No star in the sky is green" cannot become "Zero star in the sky is green."

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#46

Post by whycome »

OJFord wrote: post #44

More interesting is to compare languages. Other than native English, I only know Hindi (plural zero) and French (singular zero). I wonder what and why the divide is, perhaps especially when among these three at least I believe zero has a common conceptual origin in al-Khvārizmī (post Roman).

You...want to know how zero is divided?

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#48

Post by inopinatus »

Apropos of which I learned today that some languages have not merely a plural, but a whole complex of representations for cardinality, including rather more of the counting values than I expected, and variations for uncertainty and optionality (some might say, superposition).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_number#Types_of_nu...

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#49

Post by makeitdouble »

OJFord wrote: post #44

More interesting is to compare languages. Other than native English, I only know Hindi (plural zero) and French (singular zero). I wonder what and why the divide is, perhaps especially when among these three at least I believe zero has a common conceptual origin in al-Khvārizmī (post Roman).

To nitpick, French uses both

https://dictionnaire.lerobert.com/guide/accord-du-nom-apres-...

On the more general point, as I understand it comes down to what the speakers expect for the quantity. If it is generally expected to be plural, zero will probably be plural as well, if singular is more usual zero will follow.

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#50

Post by whycome »

ks2048 wrote: post #15

The 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"

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.

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