First Impressions

Number is, on the face of it, the easiest of grammatical notions to master. Nouns or noun phrases can be singular or plural. Most nouns form the plural by adding –s. Verbs agree with the noun in number but only in the third person singular of the present simple, which ends in –s; the other parts of the verb have no ending.

However, even within this seeming simplicity, lurk seeds of confusion. It is odd (very odd in fact) that the plural of the noun and the singular of the first person present tense of the verb have the same suffix.

[1] Many girls like to play football.

[2] That boy likes to play football.

In fact, it is so odd that no-one knows the exact etymologic of the 3rd person singular form.

Countability and Uncountability

Even odder is the fact that not all English nouns have plural forms and sometimes the same word has different meanings, depending on whether it has a plural form or not.

This issue comes about because sometimes we want to talk about a multitude of things as if they were a lump rather than a group of discrete individuals or objects. We tend to feel the same about abstract terms, so these behave in the same way.

Consider the following phrases:

[3] Vegetarians don’t eat meat.

[4] Beethoven continued to write music when he was deaf.

‘Meat’ and ‘music’ here are uncountable. They will rarely, if ever, appear in the plural.

Sometimes a single word has a countable and an uncountable form with different meanings. For example, ‘time’ and ‘room’.

[4] I have no time to do homework (uncountable)

[5] I have taken the test many times. (countable)

[6] The house has eight rooms (countable)

[7] There is no room for parking (uncountable i.e. space)

In fact there are five categories of countability in present-day English:

I Always uncountable (e.g. music, bread)

II Usually uncountable (e.g. water)

III Countable or uncountable but with different meanings (e.g. time, lamb)

IV Usually countable (e.g. leg)

V Always countable (e.g. words used to transform uncountables into countables, such as ‘piece’, ‘slice’, ‘item’)

Common Mistakes involving Number

1. Adjectives in the plural.

Adjectives almost NEVER occur in the plural in English. Or, to be more precise, adjectives NEVER agree with the noun they qualify in number. This rule also extends to the vast majority of other qualifiers (of which adjectives are a subset). So, there is no plural form of the articles (‘the’, and ‘a’), no plural forms of numbers, no plural ending on nouns used as qualifiers (even when these are logically plural), and no plural endings on words or phrases that express plurality (such as ‘some’, ‘few’, ‘several’, ‘a number of’ etc.). Neither does the word ‘other,’ if used as a qualifier, take a plural ending; although, if used as a noun substitute, it does. The singular form of other (qualifier) or others (noun) is another. The demonstrative pronouns, which have clear plural forms (‘this’,’these’,’that’,’those’), are the only significant exceptions to this rule.

Examples:

[8] Difficult issues. [No-one, native speaker or not, would put an –s on the adjective in speaking. So why do people do it in writing?]

The same applies when the adjective is the coda of the phrase.

[9] Some issues are difficult to resolve.

[10] Animal Farm is the title of a famous book about a farm that has many animals. But here the word animal is functioning as a qualifier (i.e. like an adjective). So there is no plural ending. The same goes for more common phrases such as ‘project management’ = ‘the management of projects’.

2. Failure to identify the main subject of a sentence or the main noun in a noun phrase.

This error may occur for a number of reasons:

1. a) simple oversight
2. b) because the subject of the sentence is a long way away from the verb.
3. c) failure to identify the main noun of a nominal phrase that is the subject of a sentence.

The following example covers all three of these:

[11] Members of staff responsible for office security are required to wear identity badges at all times.

Here the subject of the verb ‘are’ is the nominal phrase ‘members of staff’ and, within this nominal phrase, the main noun is ‘members’, which is plural. So the verb ‘are’ has a plural form also.

1. d) failure to notice that the main noun is an irregular plural (e.g. people, children, sheep, fish, bacteria, criteria, analyses)
2. Issues regarding the distinction between countable and uncountable.
3. a) In some cases, words that appear plural are in fact singular and vice versa. For example, ‘news’ is singular. ‘Police’, however, is plural (except in this sentence, in which it is singular, because I am referring to the word ‘police’ not the people plural who work as ‘police officers’. Names of cities or countries when they refer to sports teams (in the UK) are also plural.

[12] Liverpool is a beautiful city.

[13] Liverpool have been playing well this season.

1. b) Single objects made of pairs or parts.

‘Scissors’ and ‘stairs’ are plural and uncountable but we can make them countable by saying ‘a pair of scissors’, ‘a flight of stairs’.

1. c) The abstract nature of countability

Perhaps the most common source of error in this regard derives from the fact that countability (and hence grammatical number) is abstract in English (like gender in Latin languages) and does not necessarily bear any relation to actual plurality or singularity. In addition to this we may, as human beings, have a tendency to see large groups of objects or generalizations that take a plural form as a singular mass. Grammatically, however, these must be plural.

A common error for example concerns the word ‘people’, meaning ‘people in general’, ‘all the people in the world’. There is a natural tendency to see this as something singular, but ‘people’ is grammatically plural and, therefore, the verb that follows it must be too.

This confusion can also work the other way round. Singular words (such as ‘crowd’ and ‘flock’) refer to a plurality of people or things, but are nevertheless grammatically singular.

4. Anomalies

There are, of course, numerous anomalies. Here are two of my favorite ones.

1. a) Everyone and no-one

These two words (weirdly) are both singular and plural. Although, when used as the subject of a verb, the verb must take a singular form, when referred back to later in the sentence (by a possessive or a tag question) they suddenly become plural. So,

[14] Everyone loves their children.

[15] No-one likes a bully, do they?

1. b) ‘the number of’ and ‘a number of’

These are in fact two very different expressions and refer to two very different concepts.

“The number of” refers to the exact number of something and is thus conceived to be singular.

[16] The number of students consulting online resources has increased dramatically in recent years. [The number is the subject not the students]

“A number of,” by contrast, is a compound qualifier (i.e. a kind of adjective) meaning more or less the same as ‘some’. The subject therefore will be the noun that follows it and will be plural.

[17] A number of students have complained [Here the subject is the students].

Final Remarks

This is just a brief overview of some of the issues regarding grammatical number that I have observed as an English language teacher and editor. As errors of this nature seem to be on the rise recently, I feel that number is an often overlooked or underestimated corner of grammar that may require more attention on the part of learners and teachers.

I hope in the near future to post an article that addresses the question of why this kind of error seems to be on the increase in contemporary global English. I am also interested in the way different languages and cultures deal with the concept of grammatical number and in the manner in which this interacts with acquisition of the concept in a more mathematical and philosophical sense.

For remarks on the concept of number in legal English, see my previous post on Antonin Scalia. https://oudeis2005.wordpress.com/2014/04/30/grammar-lessons-from-antonin-scalia/