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Article published In: Lexical plurals and beyond
Edited by Peter Lauwers and Marie Lammert
[Lingvisticæ Investigationes 39:2] 2016
► pp. 355–372

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Lexical plurals for aggregates of discrete entities in English

Why plural, yet non-count, nouns?

 | Université Grenoble Alpes |
Published online: 30 March 2017
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https://doi.org/10.1075/li.39.2.08lga
This paper studies why, for a plurality of discrete entities, a non-count plural might be preferred over a count noun or a non-count singular. Building partly on Wierzbicka, A. (1985). ‘Oats’ and ‘wheat’: the fallacy of arbitrariness. In J. Haiman (Ed.), Iconicity in syntax (pp. 311–342). Amsterdam: John Benjamin. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, . (1988). The Semantics of Grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamin. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), it proposes two parameters: semantics, but also morphology. With lexical plurals, the items are construed as being of different kinds (vs. count nouns) and the focus is on the plurality of items rather than on a common purpose (vs. non-count singulars). For morphology, the notion of ‘attractor’ is proposed for some patterns which partly motivate the [±count] and number features. A collateral finding is that the plural of lexical plurals can be unstable: some nouns ending with -s undergo reanalysis as morphological plurals, while Latin plurals tend to be reanalysed as singulars. It is suggested that this trend confirms the semantic values of singular and plural numbers, as well as the influence of the morphological parameter on number and construal.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • 1.Data collection and description
  • 2.Lexical plurals vs. count nouns in the plural
  • 3.Non-count plurals vs. non-count singulars
    • 3.1Wierzbicka’s analysis of clothes vs. clothing
    • 3.2Discussion
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
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