In linguistics, singulative number and collective number (abbreviated and ) are terms used when the grammatical number for multiple items is the unmarked form of a noun, and the noun is specially marked to indicate a single item.

This is the opposite of the more common singular–plural pattern, where a noun is unmarked when

it represents one item, and is marked to represent more than one item.

In some cases, a further distinction is made between the collective and what is known in some terminologies as the plurative, the former referencing multiple items as a class, the latter referencing them as individual units.

Greenberg's linguistic universal #35 states that no language is purely singulative-collective in the sense that plural is always the null morpheme and singular is not.

Examples

Welsh

Welsh has two systems of grammatical number, singular–plural and collective–singulative. Since the loss of the noun inflection system of earlier Celtic, plurals have become unpredictable and can be formed in several ways: by adding a suffix to the end of the word (most commonly ), as in "father" and "fathers", through vowel affection, as in "boy" and "boys", or through a combination of the two, as in "sister" and "sisters". Other nouns take the singulative suffixes (for masculine nouns) or (for feminine nouns). Most nouns which inflect according to this system designate objects that are frequently found in groups, for example "birds/flock of birds", "bird"; "a bed of strawberries", "a strawberry"; "children", "a child"; and "forest", "a tree". Still other nouns use suffixes for both singular and plural forms (e.g. "a pony", "ponies", the unsuffixed * does not exist); these are similar to nouns formed from other categories of words (e.g. "charity" gives rise to "a beggar" and "beggars").

When translating the Welsh collective noun into English the plural is usually used, e.g. → 'strawberries'. However, the Welsh collective also has a sense of a homogenous whole which the English plural cannot convey; compare the English 'foliage' vs. 'leaves'.

Other languages

Singulatives are featured in some Semitic and Slavic languages.

  1. -ī, applies to sentient beings

{|

|+ suffix -a(t)

! collective

! singulative

|-

| <br> "wheat"

| <br> "a grain of wheat"

|-

| <br> "trees"

| <br> "a tree"

|-

| <br> "cattle"

| <br> "a cow"

|}

{|

|+ suffix -ī

! collective

! singulative

|-

|

|

|-

| <br>"black African people"

| <br>"a black African person"

|}

In some cases, the singulative has a further plural indicating a collection of the singular units, which may be broken or regular.

{|

! broken

| <br> 'army'

| <br> 'a soldier'

| <br> 'soldiers'

|-

! regular

| <br> 'army, military'

| <br> 'a soldier, private, or enlisted man'

| <br> 'soldiers, privates, enlisted men'

|}

In East Slavic languages, which are basically of singular–plural system, the singular suffix -ин- ('-in-', Russian, '-yn-', Ukrainian), resp. '-ін-' ('-in-', Belarusian) performs the singulative function for collective nouns.

{|

!

! collective

! singulative

|-

! Russian

| , <br>"peas in mass"

| , <br>"a single pea"

|-

! Ukrainian

| , <br>"sand"

| , <br>"grain of sand"

  • samak, collective form, fish in general
  • samak-a(t), samak-e, singulative, a single fish
  • ʔasmaak, plurative, as in "many fish" or "three fish"

See also

  • Grammatical number
  • Plural

References

Bibliography

  • Bender, M. Lionel. 1983. "Majang phonology and morphology". In Nilo-Saharan Language Studies, 114–147. East Lansing: Michigan State University.
  • Corbett, Greville G. 2000. Number. Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics. Cambridge University Press.
  • Tiersma, Peter Meijes. 1982. "Local and General Markedness." Language 58.4: 832-849