LESSON 8 NUMBER

Discussion. A) Read the following extract from “Philosophy of Grammar” (Chapter XIV NUMBER) by Otto Jespersen and give your opinion on logical and linguistic difficulties involved in defining the category of number.

Number might appear to be one of the simplest natural categories, as simple as “two and two are four”. Yet n closer inspection it presents a great many difficulties, both logical and linguistic.

From a logical point of view the obvious distinction is between one and more than one, the latter class being subdivided into 2, 3, 4, etc.; as a separate class may be recognized “all”, while beyond all these there is a class of “things” to which words like “one”, “two” are inapplicable; we may call them uncountables…

The corresponding syntactic distinctions are singular and plural, which are found inmost languages, while some besides the ordinary plural have a dual, and very few a trial.

B) Read the next part of the Chapter NUMBER and find answers to the questions:

1. Why does plurality presuppose difference? What should be the degree of this difference?
2. What are the peculiarities of linguistic terms with plural meaning in English, German, Danish, Italian, Spanish, Magyar?

We can only speak of “more than one” in regard to things which without being identical belong to the same kind. Plurality presupposes difference, but on the other hand if the difference is too great, it is impossible to use words like two or three. A pear and an apple are two fruits; a brick and a castle can barely be called two things; a brick and a musical sound are not two, a man and a truth and the taste of an apple do not make three, and so on.

What objects can be counted together, generally depends on the linguistic expression. In the majority of cases the classification is so natural that it is practically identical in most languages; but in some cases there are differences called forth by varieties of linguistic structure. Thus in English there is no difficulty in saying “Tom and Mary are cousins” as cousins means both a male and a female cousin; Danish (like German and other languages) has different words, and therefore must say “T. og M. er fætter og kusine,” and English five cousins cannot be translated exactly into Danish. On the other hand, English has no comprehensive term for what the Germans call geschwister, Danish søskende. Sometimes, however, a numeral is placed before such a collocation as brothers and sisters: “they have ten brothers and sisters”, which may be = 2 brothers and 8 sisters or any other combinations; “we have twenty cocks and hens” (= Danish tyve høns). The natural need for a linguistic term which will cover male and female beings of the same kind has in some languages led to the syntactical rule that the masculine plural serves for both sexes: Italian gli zii, Spanish los padres.

In some cases it is not possible to tell beforehand what to reckon as one object: with regard to some composite things different languages have different points of view; compare – un pantalon – a pair of trousers, et par buxer, ein paar hosen; eine brille – a pair of spectacles, une paire de lunettes, et par briller, en sax, eine schere – a pair of scissors, une paire de ciseaux.

English sometimes tends to use the plural form in such cases as a singular, thus a scissors, a tongs, a tweezers.

With parts of the body there can generally be no doubt what to consider as one and what as two; yet in English there is (or rather was) some vacillation with regard to moustache, which is in the NED defined as (a) the hair on both sides of the upper lip, (b) the hair covering either side of the upper lip, so that what to one is a pair of moustaches, to another is a moustache: “he twirled first one moustache and then the other.”

In Magyar it is a fixed rule that those parts of the body which occur in pairs are looked upon as wholes; where the English says “my eyes are weak” or “his hands tremble” the Hungarian will use the singular: a szemem (sg.) gyenge, reszket a keze (sg.). The natural consequence, which to us appears very unnatural, is what when one eye or hand or foot is spoken of, the word fél ‘half” is used: fél szemmel “with one eye”, literally “with half eyes”, fél lábára sánta “lame of one foot”. This applies also to words fro gloves, boots, etc.: keztyü (pair of) gloves, fél keztyü (a half … i.e.) one glove, csizma (sg.) “boots”, fél csizma “a boot”. The plural forms of such words keztyuk, csizmák) are used to denote several pairs of different kinds of gloves, boots.