Grammatical number Totally Explained

In linguistics, grammatical number is grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one" or "more than one").
The count distinctions typically, but not always, correspond to the actual count of the referents of the marked noun or pronoun.
The word "number" is also used in linguistics to describe the distinction between certain grammatical aspects that indicate the number of times an event occurs, such as the semelfactive aspect, the iterative aspect, etc. For that use of the term, see "Grammatical aspect".

Overview

Grammatical number is a morphological category characterized by the expression of quantity through inflection or agreement. As an example, consider the English sentences below: ť That apple on the table is fresh.

Those two apples on the table are fresh. The number of apples is marked on the noun — "apple", singular number (one item) vs. "apples", plural number (more than one item) —, on the demonstrative, "that/those", and on the verb, "is/are". Note that, especially in the second sentence, this information can be considered redundant, since quantity is already indicated by the numeral "two".
A language has grammatical number when its nouns are subdivided into morphological classes according to the quantity they express, such that:

Every noun belongs to a single number class. (Number partitions nouns into disjoint classes.)
Noun modifiers (such as adjectives) and verbs have different forms for each number class, and must be inflected to match the number of the nouns they refer to. (Number is an agreement category.)

This is the case in English: every noun is either singular or plural (a few, such as "fish", can be either, according to context), and at least some modifiers of nouns — namely the demonstratives, the personal pronouns, the articles, and verbs — are inflected to agree with the number of the nouns they refer to: "this car" and "these cars" are correct, while "*this cars" or "*these car" are ungrammatical.
Not all languages have number as a grammatical category. In those that do not, quantity must be expressed either directly, with numerals, or indirectly, through optional quantifiers. However, many of these languages compensate for the lack of grammatical number with an extensive system of measure words.

Semantic vs. grammatical number

All languages are able to specify the quantity of referents. They may do so by lexical means with words such as English a few, some, one, two, five hundred. However, not every language has a grammatical category of number. Grammatical number is expressed by morphological and/or syntactic means. That is, it's indicated by certain grammatical elements, such as through affixes or number words. Grammatical number may be thought of as the indication of semantic number through grammar.
Languages that express quantity only by lexical means lack a grammatical category of number. For instance, in Khmer, neither nouns nor verbs carry any grammatical information concerning number: such information can only be conveyed by lexical items such as khlah 'some', pii-bey 'a few', and so on..
Most languages of the world have formal means to express differences of number. The most widespread distinction, as found in English and many other languages, involves a simple two-way number contrast between singular and plural (car / cars; child / children, etc.). Other more elaborate systems of number are described below.

Number in specific languages

English

English is typical of most world languages, in distinguishing only between singular and plural number. The plural form of a word is usually created by adding the suffix -(e)s. Common exceptions include the pronouns, which have irregular plurals, as in I versus we, because they're ancient and frequently used words.

French

In its written form, French declines nouns for number (singular or plural). In speech, however, the majority of nouns (and adjectives) are not actually declined for number. This is because the typical plural suffix "-s" or "-es", is silent, and thus doesn't really indicate a change in pronunciation; the plural article or determiner is the real indicator of plurality (but see Liaison (French) for a common exception). However, plural number still exists in spoken French because some plurals do differ from the singular in pronunciation; for example, masculine singulars in -al [-al] typically form masculine plurals in -aux [-o].

Hebrew

In Modern Hebrew, a Semitic language, most nouns have only singular and plural forms, such as ספר /'sɛfɛʁ/ "book" and ספרים /sfaʁ'im/ "books", but some have distinct dual forms using a distinct dual suffix (largely nouns pertaining to numbers or time, such as אלפיים /al'pajim/ "two thousand" and שבועיים /ʃvu'ajim/ "two weeks"), some use this dual suffix for their regular plurals (largely body parts that tend to come in pairs, such as עיניים /eɪ'najim/ "eyes", as well as some that don't, such as שיניים /ʃi'najim/ "teeth"), and some are inherently dual (such as מכנסיים /mɪxna'sajim/ "pants" and אופניים /ofɐ'najim/ "bicycle"). Adjectives, verbs, and pronouns agree with their subjects' or antecedents' numbers, but only have a two-way distinction between singular and plural; dual nouns entail plural adjectives, verbs, and pronouns.

Obligatoriness of number marking

In many languages, such as English, number is obligatorily expressed in every grammatical context; in other languages, however, number expression is limited to certain classes of nouns, such as animates or referentially prominent nouns (as with proximate forms in most Algonquian languages, opposed to referentially less prominent obviative forms).
A very common situation is for plural number to not be marked if there's any other overt indication of number, as for example in Hungarian: virág "flower"; virágok "flowers"; hat virág "six flowers".

Number agreement

Verbs

In many languages, verbs are conjugated according to number. Using French as an example, one says je vois (I see), but nous voyons (we see). The verb voir (to see) changes from vois in the first person singular to voyons in the plural. In everyday English, this often happens in the third person (she sees, they see), but not in other grammatical persons, except with the verb to be.

Other lexical items

Adjectives often agree with the number of the noun they modify. For example, in French, one says un grand arbre [œ̃gʀɑ̃t aʀbʀ] "a tall tree", but deux grands arbres [døgʀɑ̃z aʀbʀ] "two tall trees". The singular adjective grand becomes grands in the plural, unlike English "tall", which remains unchanged.
Other determiners may agree with number. In English, the demonstratives "this", "that" change to "these", "those" in the plural, and the indefinite article "a", "an" is either omitted or changes to "some". In French and German, the definite articles have gender distinctions in the singular but not the plural. In Spanish and Portuguese, both definite and indefinite articles are inflected for gender and number, for example Portuguese o, a "the" (singular, masc./fem.), os, as "the" (plural, masc./fem.); um, uma "a(n)" (singular, masc./fem.), uns, umas "some" (plural, masc./fem.)
In the Finnish sentence Yöt ovat pimeitä "Nights are dark", each word referring to the plural noun yöt "nights" ("night" = yö) is pluralized (night-PL is-PL dark-PL-partitive).

Exceptions

Sometimes, grammatical number won't represent the actual quantity. For example, in Ancient Greek neuter plurals took a singular verb. The plural form of a pronoun may also be applied to a single individual as a sign of importance, respect or generality, as in the pluralis majestatis, the T-V distinction, and the generic "you", found in many languages, or, in English, when using the singular "they" for gender-neutrality.
   In Arabic, the plural of a non-human noun (one that refers to an animal or to an inanimate entity (regardless of whether the noun is grammatically masculine or feminine in the singular) is treated as feminine singular—this is called the inanimate plural. For example: ť رجل جميل (rajul jamīl) 'beautiful/handsome man': rajul (man) is masculine singular, so it takes the masculine singular adjective jamīl.

    بيت جميل (bayt jamīl) 'beautiful house': bayt (house) is masculine singular, so it takes the masculine singular jamīl. ť كلب جميل (kalb jamīl) 'beautiful dog':kalb (dog) is masculine singular, so it takes the masculine singular jamīl.

    بنت جميلة (bint jamīlah) 'beautiful girl': bint is feminine singular, so it takes the feminine singular jamīlah. ť سيارة جميلة (sayyārah jamīlah) 'beautiful car': sayyārah is feminine singular, so it takes the feminine singular jamīlah.

    رجال جمال (rijāl jimāl) 'beautiful/handsome men': rijāl (men) is masculine plural, so it takes the masculine plural jimāl. ť بنات جميلات (banāt jamīlāt) 'beautiful girls': banāt is feminine plural, so it takes the feminine plural jamīlāt.

but ť بيوت جميلة (buyūt jamīlah) 'beautiful houses': buyūt (houses) is non-human plural, and so takes the inanimate plural (feminine singular) jamīlah.

    سيارات جميلة (sayyārāt jamīlah) 'beautiful cars': sayyārāt is non-human plural, and so takes the inanimate plural jamīlah. ť كلاب جميلة (kilāb jamīlah) 'beautiful dogs': kilāb is non-human plural, and so takes the inanimate plural jamīlah.

Collective nouns

A collective noun is a word that designates a group of objects or beings regarded as a whole, such as "flock", "team", or "corporation". Although many languages treat collective nouns as singular, in others they may be interpreted as plural. In British English, phrases such as the committee are meeting are common (the so-called agreement in sensu "in meaning"; with the meaning of a noun, rather than with its form). The use of this type of construction varies with dialect and level of formality.

Types of number

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. This is the case in English: car/cars, box/boxes, man/men. There may be exceptional nouns whose plural is identical to the singular: one fish / two fish.

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, for example Japanese and some Brythonic languages. A rough example in English is "snowflake", which may be considered a singulative form of "snow" (however, English has no productive process of forming singulative nouns, and no singulative modifiers, so it can't be said to have a singulative number). In other languages, singulatives can be productively formed from collective nouns; for example Standard Arabic حجر ḥajar "stone" → حجرة ḥajara "(individual) stone", بقر baqar "cattle" → بقرة baqara "(single) cow". In Russian, the suffix for forming singulative form is -ин- -in-; for example град grad "hail" → градина gradina "hailstone", лёд lyod "ice" → льдина l'dina "block of ice". In both Russian and Arabic, the singulative form always takes on the feminine gender.

Dual number

ť Main article: Dual number

The distinction between a "singular" number (one) and a "plural" number (more than one) found in English isn't the only possible classification. Another one is "singular" (one), "dual" (two) and "plural" (more than two). Dual number existed in Proto-Indo-European, persisted in many of the now extinct ancient Indo-European languages that descended from it—Sanskrit, Ancient Greek and Gothic for example—and can still be found in a few modern Indo-European languages such as Icelandic and Slovene language. Many more modern Indo-European languages show residual traces of the dual, as in the English distinctions both vs. all, either vs. any, twice vs. <number> times (an archaic thrice also exists, meaning "three times"), and so on.
Many Semitic languages also have dual number. For instance, in Arabic all nouns can have singular, plural, or dual forms. Masculine plural nouns end with ون and feminine plural nouns end with ات, whilst ان is added to the end of a noun to indicate that it's dual.

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). Tolomako, Lihir, Manam and Tok Pisin (though only in its pronouns) have trial number.
There is a hierarchy between number categories: No language distinguishes a trial unless having a dual, and no language has dual without a plural (Greenberg 1972).

Paucal

Paucal number, for a few (as opposed to many) instances of the referent (for example in Hopi, Warlpiri and in Arabic for some nouns). See Plural, for some examples.

Distributive plural

Distributive plural number, for many instances viewed as independent individuals (for example in Navajo).

Inverse number

The languages of the Kiowa-Tanoan family have three numbers — singular, dual, and plural — and exhibit an unusual system of marking number, called inverse number (or number toggling). In this scheme, every countable noun has what might be called its "inherent" or "expected" numbers, and is unmarked for these numbers. When a noun appears in an inverse ("atypical") number, it's inflected to mark this. For example, in Jemez, where nouns take the ending -sh to denote an inverse number, there are four noun classes which inflect for number as follows:

class	description	singular	dual	plural
I	animate nouns	-	-sh	-sh
II	some inanimate nouns	-sh	-sh	-
III	other inanimate nouns	-	-sh	-
IV	mass (non-countable) nouns	(n/a)	(n/a)	(n/a)

As can be seen, class-I nouns are inherently singular, class-II nouns are inherently plural, class-III nouns are inherently singular or plural. Class-IV nouns can't be counted and are never marked with -sh. (From Sprott 1992, p. 53.)
A similar system is seen in Kiowa (Kiowa is distantly related to Tanoan languages like Jemez):

class	singular	dual	plural
I	-	-	-gɔ
II	-gɔ	-	-
III	-ɡɔ	-	-ɡɔ
IV	(n/a)	(n/a)	(n/a)

Formal expression of number

Synthetic languages typically distinguish grammatical number by inflection. (Note that analytic languages, such as Chinese, don't have grammatical number.) In most languages, the singular is formally unmarked, whereas the plural is marked in some way. Other languages, most notably the Bantu languages, mark both the singular and the plural, for instance Swahili (see example below). The third logical possibility, rarely found in languages, is an unmarked plural contrasting with marked singular. Below are some examples of number affixes for nouns (where the inflecting morphemes are underlined):

Affixes (such as suffixes, prefixes, simulfixes)

Estonian puu "tree, wood" (singular) — puud "trees, woods" (plural)
Finnish: lehmä "cow" (singular) — lehmät "cows" (plural)
Slovenian: lipa "linden" (singular) — lipi "linden" (dual) — lipe "linden" (plural)
Swahili: mtoto "child" (singular) — watoto "children" (plural)
Luganda: omusajja "man" (singular) — abasajja "men" (plural)
Arabic: كِتَاب kitāb "book" (singular) — كُتُب kutub "books" (plural)

Reduplication

Indonesian: orang "person" (singular) — orang-orang "people" (plural)
Somali: buug "book" (singular) — buug-ag "books" (plural)

Elements marking number may appear on nouns and pronouns in dependent-marking languages or on verbs and adjectives in head-marking languages.

English (dependent-marking)	Western Apache (head-marking)
Paul is teaching the cowboy.	Paul idilohí yiłch’ígó’aah.
Paul is teaching the cowboys.	Paul idilohí yiłch’ídagó’aah.

In the English sentence above, the plural suffix -s is added to the noun cowboy. In the Western Apache, a head-marking language, equivalent, a plural prefix da- is added to the verb yiłch’ígó’aah "he is teaching him", resulting in yiłch’ídagó’aah "he is teaching them" while noun idilohí "cowboy" is unmarked for number.

Number particles

Plurality is sometimes marked by a specialized number particle (or number word). This is frequent in Australian and Austronesian languages. An example from Tagalog is the word mga: compare bahay "house" with mga bahay "houses". In Kapampangan, certain nouns optionally denote plurality by secondary stress: ing laláki "man" and ing babái "woman" become ding láláki "men" and ding bábái "women".

Auxiliary languages

Auxiliary languages often have fairly simple systems of grammatical number. In one of the most common schemes (found, for example, in Interlingua and Ido), nouns and pronouns distinguish between singular and plural, but not other numbers, and adjectives and verbs don't display any number agreement.

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