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Why is zero plural? (2024)

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Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#91

Post by eesmith »

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 are using examples which are typically plural. Consider instead these singular forms:

"My shelf contains no Elf-on-a-Shelf" / "My shelf contains no elephant" / "My shelf contains no Hemingway book." / "My shelf contains no book by Hemingway."

(For an example of the third: "Don't look there for a copy of 'The Old Man and the Sea'? I detest Hemingway, and my shelf contains no Hemingway book." In this case, 'no' means something like 'not even one'.)

As for the others, "legs" rarely come in a singular form. There is (usually) only one king for an entire population, and there is (usually) only one soul per creature, so these singular forms are just fine:

"Snails have no king." / "Snails have no soul."

There's usually a lot of stars, but our solar system has but one sun, making the following singular form just fine:

"What if there were no sun in the sky?"

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#92

Post by zelos »

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 car has no steering wheel", though, so isn't it related to how many you'd expect?

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#93

Post by hnlmorg »

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."

There are? A quick search in DDG didn’t find any examples. However I did get multiple examples of “stars” (plural).

While English is defined by use, that doesn’t mean that all forms of slang automatically become grammatically correct.

For example: “no star in the sky” might be common vernacular in some regions but it wouldn’t be appropriate to use in formal writing. It’s also not a phrasing I’ve encountered before.

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#94

Post by Terr_ »

inopinatus wrote: post #67
Terr_ wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not seeing a "zero" in there that would allow us to test if it can be replaced with "no." I would not expect that no->zero is, er, grammatically symmetric to zero->no.

空

Isn't it usually 無 for zen koans?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_(negative)

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#95

Post by bilekas »

I actually didn't know this so it's new to me but maybe I'm missing the nuances of English..

There is only 1 quantity in 0.. Or inversely there is a singular ABSENSE of a quantity. So how it's explained in the answer doesn't really explain it for me.

Edit: I also have a problem understanding "On accident" when for me it's surely "By accident". English is strange.

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#96

Post by seszett »

thrance wrote: post #3

In French, the official rule from our (way too expensive) Académie Française is, that it's plural if you have at least x of it, where |x|≥2.

The Académie française does not edict official rules. Nobody does, there is no official governing authority for the French language but the ministry of Education is the main reference in France. Their rules are generally used for official documents, and since they decide what gets taught to children that's what becomes the normal language when the children become adults.

Also, it costs about 1 million euros per year[0], I wouldn't call that very expensive on the scale of a country like France. Even if it's absolutely useless.

In practice, zero is normally singular in French unless you want to show that there is none of a number of things ("zéro produits artificiels", "zéro émissions").

[0]https://www.liberation.fr/checknews/2017/12/14/bonjour-combi...

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#97

Post by rekabis »

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 suspect it is the difference between saying “1 book” and “none of the books”. The former is singling out a single book, but saying zero books is highlighting the negative of all books. Ergo, “0 books” is plural, because it is excluding all the books instead of including a specific subset.

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#98

Post by kolinko »

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 as a bulk/mass.

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.

From this perspective, zero of something is zero plural-not-easily countable. Kind of “Zero OF books” like “Ten OF books”, with of being implied by the form of the word.

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#99

Post by axegon_ »

I am not sure that it's a function of English language per se. I speak several language and it's the same story with all of them and one of those languages is Slavic so it comes from a very different root. That said, Greece is a rock throw away and I think the ancient Greek mathematicians(Pythagoras primarily) might have something to do with it: The Egyptians were the first known to use symbols to represents parts of something but it wasn't until the Greeks introduced fractions to express a quantifiable representation of sub-divisions of a unit, making the sub-division it's own unit: you need 4 * 1/4-th's of something to make it to 1 complete unit.

Then again, I could be wrong.

Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)

#100

Post by seszett »

JadeNB wrote: post #5
thrance wrote: post #3

In French, the official rule from our (way too expensive) Académie Française is, that it's plural if you have at least x of it, where |x|≥2.

What would it mean for x to be negative, if x is how many of something you have?

"Il fait -2 degrés ce matin".
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