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Why is zero plural? (2024)

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Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#51

Post by dhosek »

cyberax wrote: post #40
rerdavies wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Looking at that page, I’m not buying the claims. I’m not an expert on Slovene, but my understanding is that it only has singular, dual and plural and not the 3–4 special case (which seems to have been confused with other Slavic languages like Czech and Slovak). I don’t think their dual rule is correct for Slovene either.

I’m surprised about the higher in the conversation comment about Greek as the dual exists in Modern Greek only as a grammatical feature of the written form of the word for “two” and is rare in classical Greek.

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#52

Post by mcphage »

gerdesj wrote: post #4

[flagged]

> This looks like proof by assertion

It’s not a proof at all, by anything. It’s a description of the singular / plural distinction in English.

> Linguistic tautology is not mathematics. That way lies madness.

Singular vs. plural is not a mathematical fact, it’s a linguistic fact. I’m sorry you consider that bollocks.

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#53

Post by cyberax »

dhosek wrote: post #51
cyberax wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Looking at that page, I’m not buying the claims. I’m not an expert on Slovene, but my understanding is that it only has singular, dual and plural and not the 3–4 special case (which seems to have been confused with other Slavic languages like Czech and Slovak). I don’t think their dual rule is correct for Slovene either. I’m surprised about the higher in the conversation comment about Greek as the dual exists in Mode…

Having three plural forms for Slavic languages is typical, e.g. Ukrainian and Russian have them. Roughly speaking, one form for numerals ending with "1", a different form for numerals ending in "2", "3", "4", and the third form for the rest of them (simplifying a bit).

Slovenian appears to have a special word form for numerals ending in "2". Looks like it's a remnant of the dual number that existed in early Slavic languages: https://study.2tm.eu/blogs/the-dual-number-in-the-slovenian-... And it is indeed unusual!

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#54

Post by 9rx »

Terr_ wrote: post #45
9rx wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 examp…

> If I say all rodents are mammals, you can't disprove that just by pointing out the existence of dogs and cats.

Without a full understanding of the intent and background behind that statement that is not clear. It might be disprovable under some circumstances. If we take it to the logical extreme, the words absolutely could be defined such that it is disprovable, so it obviously could be.

Is that likely? In this case, probably not, but it becomes more likely when there is more fractured use. Consider tech jargon. The marjory of the discussions on HN are parties talking past each other because they came with different understandings of what words/phrases mean.

> "No star in the sky is green"

I wrote "No star in the sky" to try and steer us away from different contexts. While I acknowledge that such usage also exists, that is outside of what I was trying to refer to and I think you will agree that in your interpretation that usage is not in line with what we are talking about.

Such is the downfall of languages made up on the spot as they are used. All you can do is try and convey something to the recipient, and sometimes you'll fail. This ended up being a great example of exactly what we're talking about!

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#55

Post by david_allison »

dhosek wrote: post #51
cyberax wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Looking at that page, I’m not buying the claims. I’m not an expert on Slovene, but my understanding is that it only has singular, dual and plural and not the 3–4 special case (which seems to have been confused with other Slavic languages like Czech and Slovak). I don’t think their dual rule is correct for Slovene either. I’m surprised about the higher in the conversation comment about Greek as the dual exists in Mode…

From the underlying data:

* 1 dan

* 2 dneva

* 3 dnevi

* 5 dni

https://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/latest/supplemental/lang...

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#56

Post by ks2048 »

bee_rider wrote: post #38
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"

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…

Yes, I think (2) is sort of like saying "not even 1" and more likely a response to someone saying there is a book, whereas (1) is a more common phrasing and is just saying how many books there are.

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#57

Post by egypturnash »

thayne wrote: post #42
egypturnash wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I suspected as much, but felt like being pedantic. :)

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#59

Post by tsimionescu »

mayd wrote: post #27
9rx wrote: post #20

Earlier 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.

This example does sound wrong to a native English speaker. It contains a subjunctive mood construct and the correct version would be: "What if there were no stars in the sky?"

"What if there were no star in the sky?" also works even if you want to use the subjunctive.

Note that not all native speakers of English use or prefer this type of construction. Also, this use of "were" instead of "was" is sometimes now called irrealis and considered separate from the subjunctive (which is then used to refer only to constructions like "it's important that you be here early tomorrow").

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#60

Post by tsimionescu »

mayd wrote: post #34
delibes wrote: post #23

There 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.

There is no spoon in this room. Equivalent to "There are no spoons in this room".
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