In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity (i.e., grammatical number) representing a value of other-than-one. Typically, linguists attribute to the plural morpheme the value "more-than-one" yet that is a mistake. Consider the form of the noun followed by the number zero. We say "zero cats" and not "zero cat". Clearly, zero is not more than one. The same point can be made with fractions. We say, for instance, that a family in Italy has an average of 0.9 children, not 0.9 child. Again, it is obvious that 0.9 is not more than one. The proper value of the so called "plural" is, then, "other-than-one". Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker (morpheme) is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one. Plurality is a linguistic universal, represented variously among the languages as a separate word (free morpheme), an affix (bound morpheme), or by other morphological indications such as stress or implicit markers/context.
In the English language, singular and plural are the only usual grammatical numbers, with minor dual exceptions ("both", "either", etc.)
A plural is commonly abbreviated pl. in dictionaries. In part-of-speech tagging it has other notation which distinguish different types of plurals based on the grammatical and semantic context.
In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity (i.e., grammatical number) representing a value of other-than-one. Typically, linguists attribute to the plural morpheme the value "more-than-one" yet that is a mistake. Consider the form of the noun followed by the number zero. We say "zero cats" and not "zero cat". Clearly, zero is not more than one. The same point can be made with fractions. We say, for instance, that a family in Italy has an average of 0.9 children, not 0.9 child. Again, it is obvious that 0.9 is not more than one. The proper value of the so called "plural" is, then, "other-than-one". Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker (morpheme) is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one. Plurality is a linguistic universal, represented variously among the languages as a separate word (free morpheme), an affix (bound morpheme), or by other morphological indications such as stress or implicit markers/context.
In the English language, singular and plural are the only usual grammatical numbers, with minor dual exceptions ("both", "either", etc.)
A plural is commonly abbreviated pl. in dictionaries. In part-of-speech tagging it has other notation which distinguish different types of plurals based on the grammatical and semantic context.