Ответы к контрольной работе: Сategory of number of nouns

Содержание

• 1.2 Types of Number
• a) Singular versus plural. In most languages with grammatical number, nouns, and sometimes other parts of speech, have two forms, the singular, for one instance of a concept, and the plural, for more than one instance. Usually, the singular is the unmarked form of a word, and the plural is obtained by inflecting the singular.
• b) Collective versus singulative. Some languages differentiate between a basic form, the collective, which is indifferent in respect to number, and a more complicated derived form for single entities, the singulative. A rough example in English is «snowflake», which may be considered a singulative form of «snow» (although English has no productive process of forming singulative nouns, and no singulative modifiers).
• c) Dual number. The distinction between a «singular» number (one) and a «plural» number (more than one) found in English is not the only possible classification. Another one is «singular» (one), «dual» (two) and «plural» (more than two). Dual number existed in Proto-Indo-European. Many more modern Indo-European languages show residual traces of the dual, as in the English distinctions both versus all and better versus best.
• d) Trial number. The trial number is a grammatical number referring to 'three items', in contrast to 'singular' (one item), 'dual' (two items), and 'plural' (four or more items). There is a hierarchy between number categories: No language distinguishes a trial unless having a dual, and no language has dual without a plural. English, along with the other Germanic languages and most Romance languages, uses the plural.
• e) Distributive plural. Distributive plural number, for many instances viewed as independent individuals (e.g. in Navajo).
• Conclusion