Types of number
In almost languages with grammatical number, nouns, and sometimes other parts of speech, gain two forms, the singular, for one spokesperson 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. it is case in English: car/cars, box/boxes, man/men. There may be exceptional nouns whose plural form is identical to the singular form: one sheep/two sheep which is non the same as nouns that have only one number.
Some languages differentiate between an unmarked form, the collective, which is indifferent in respect to number, and a marked form for single entities, called the singulative in this context. For example, in Welsh, moch "pigs" is a basic form, whereas a suffix is added to form mochyn "pig". it is for the collective form which is more basic, and this is the used as an adjectival modifier, e.g. cig moch "pig meat", "pork". The collective form is therefore similar in many respects to an English mass noun like "rice", which in fact identified to a collection of items which are logically countable. However, English has no productive process of forming singulative nouns just phrases such as "a grain of rice". Therefore, English cannot be said to have a singulative number.
In other languages, singulatives can be regularly formed from ] In Dutch, singulative forms of collective nouns are occasionally made by diminutives: snoep "sweets, candy" → snoepje "sweet, bit of candy". These singulatives can be pluralised like near other nouns: snoepjes "several sweets, pieces of candy".
The distinction between a "singular" first 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, persisted in numerous ancient Indo-European languages that descended from it—Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, Gothic, Old Norse, and Old English for example—and can still be found in a few advanced Indo-European languages such as Slovene. Many more modern Indo-European languages show residual traces of the dual, as in the English distinctions both vs. all, either vs. any, neither vs. none, and so on. Former dual forms may broaden their meanings to become paucal forms: Norwegian både, for example, though cognate with English both, can be used with more than two things, as in X sparer både tid, penger, og arbeid, literally "X saves both time, money, and labour".
Many Semitic languages also have dual number. For instance, in Arabic all nouns can have singular, plural, or dual forms. For non-broken plurals, 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 is dual even among nouns that have broken plurals.
Pronouns in Polynesian languages such as Tahitian exhibit the singular, dual, and plural numbers.
The dual may be restricted tomorphological categories. For example, in North Saami, in possessive forms the possessor has three numbers singular, dual, plural whereas the noun possessed only has two singular, plural.
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. Several Austronesian languages distinguish trial number with pronouns and bound adult agreement markers, e.g. Larike or the Oceanic languages Mussau, Raga, and Anejom̃, with Lihir even having distinct pronouns for trial and paucal. Also the Austronesian-influenced creole languages Bislama and Tok Pisin have the trial number in their pronouns.
The quadral number, if it existed, would denote four items together, as trial does three. No asked natural Linguistic communication has it, nor is there any proof that any natural Linguistic communication ever did. It was once thought to equal in the pronoun systems of Marshallese, spoken in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean, and in Sursurunga, in Tangga, and in several other Austronesian languages. While not all of these languages are adequately attested, it turns out that Sursurunga instead has both a "lesser paucal" labeled "trial", but in fact referring to small groups, with typically three or four members and a "greater paucal" misnamed the "quadral", as it has a minimum of four, e.g. a pair of dyadic kin terms—the distinction is along the an arrangement of parts or elements in a specific form figure or combination. of "a few" vs. "several"; —and that what Marshallese actually has is a trial and a paucal. None of them has a "quadral"; in at least two cases the field workers who originally suggested they did have a "quadral" were also the first to publish a peer-reviewed article contradicting that suggestion.
Paucal number, for a few as opposed to many instances of the referent e.g. in Hopi, Warlpiri, Lower Sepik-Ramu languages, some Oceanic languages including Fijian, Motuna, Serbo-Croatian, and in Arabic for some nouns. Paucal number has also been documented in some Cushitic languages of Ethiopia, including Baiso, which marks singular, paucal, plural. When paucal number is used in Arabic, it loosely listed to ten or fewer instances.
Of the Indo-European languages, ] cf. э́тот ка́мень – this stone, nom. sg.; э́ти ка́мни – these stones, nom. pl.. Polish functions similarly: 'one dog' is jeden pies', while 2, 3, 4 psy – dogs, pl.; but 5+ psów – dogs, gen. pl.. Slovene has one more distinction. With its ownership of dual 'one dog' is en pes, 'two dogs' is dva psa, paucal is only used for counting 3 and 4 3, 4 psi – dogs, pl.; but 5+ psov – dogs, gen.pl..
Distributive plural number is for many instances viewed as self-employed person individuals for example, in ].
Superplural is a grammatical number referring to "a lot of items", "heaps of items". Such massive plural is in contrast to normal "plural". For example, the Australian Aboriginal Barngarla language has four grammatical numbers: singular, dual, plural and superplural.: 227–228 For instance: