Category of Number

The only morphological category of the noun which is almost always marked in present-day English is that of number. Like in Ukrainian, it is mostly realised synthetically, i.e. through zero and marked inflexions respectively. Eg: child — children, ox — oxen, and correspondingly baths, cargos, jubilees, bushes, watches, countries, heroes/ vetoes, etc. An irregularity can be observed in the position of the English inflexion -s in various compounds, eg: take-off = take-offs, sit-in = sit-ins, forget-me-not = forget-me-nots, merry-go-round = merry-go-rounds, Commander-in-chief = Commanders-in chief; passer-by = passers-by.

Completely allomorphic, i.e. pertained only to the English language is the formation of plural number by way of sound interchange (ablaut) as in the following seven English nouns: foot — feet, tooth — teeth, goose — geese; man — men, woman — women; mouse — mice.

A few simple life nouns have in English one and the same form for singular and plural (cf. grouse, sheep, deer, swine, plaice). Usually, these nouns also have the zero marked plural form: carp, pike, trout, deer, salmon. Apart from the genuinely English there are some borrowed noun inflexions. These are Latin: -a- -ae: alga — algae, larva — larvae; -us- -i: stimulus — stimuli, terminus — termini; -um- -a: curriculum — curricula, erratum — errata, etc. Several Greek borrowings preserve their singular and plural inflexions as well: -is es (analysis — analyses, basis — bases) and –on a (phenomenon — phenomena), though some nouns often take regular English plural forms (cf. memorandums, ganglions, solos, tempos, metropolises, etc.). Unlike English, Ukrainian number inflexions are partly predetermined by the declension groups to which the nouns are allotted, and partly by the gender of nouns and final consonant or vowel, which can respectively be hard, soft or mixed (sibilant). Moreover, many Ukrainian nouns have both number oppositions marked. Thus, masculine, neuter and feminine gender nouns of the first and second declensions have the following endings:

The third and fourth declensions nouns in Ukrainian may also have hard, soft and sibilant (шиплячі) final consonants.

The major allomorphic feature in the system of noun categories is the existence in Ukrainian (as in Russian and Byelorussian) of dual number (двоїна), which is often mixed up with the plural or replaced by it by many Ukrainians. The nouns express dual number only in connection with the numeral adjuncts two, three and four. This number is mostly indicated by stress which differs, as a rule, from that of the plural form, eg:

Singular — Plural — Dual

берег - береги - два (три, чотири) бе'реги; дуб — дуби but два (три, чотири) 'дуби; слово — слова but два (три, чотири) слова; село - села (дві, три, чотири) сел'і, etc.

Typologically isomorphic is the existence in English and Ukrainian of the classes of singularia and pluralia tantum nouns mostly expressing quantity. The singularia tantum include some semantic groups of mainly common nouns which rarely denote singular notions like 1) parts of the world: the North, the South, the East, the West, the North-West the North-East (північ, південь, захід, схід, північний захід), etc. The great majority of singularia tantum nouns are names of materials: iron, copper, snow, milk, bread; срібло, золото, сніг, хліб, сіль, молоко, etc. These and other nouns in both contrasted languages denote plurality of substances and things, whereas abstract notions have a singular expression of number.