ADAU-
nun Elmi Əsə
rl
ə
ri. G
ə
nc
ə
, 2016,
№
1
178
But they leave out the
some when there is a numeral because the numeral makes it clear that more
than one is intended. This practice catches on, and eventually two things happen. First, because
the
some doesn't convey very much information, it gets pronounced more and more quickly and
carelessly, and eventually all that's left of it is the
s at the beginning. This
s is pronounced as if it
were part of the noun that it follows, and it even
assimilates
to the voicing of the last phone in the
noun, so it is pronounced /z/ in
apples. Second, the members of the tribe find it weird to
say
apple whenever they mean more than one, even when the context makes it clear that they do. So
now they say things like
give me two apples.
Even though this story is completely fictitious, it illustrates what has apparently happened in
two kinds of modern languages. English is a language of the second type. It is ungrammatical in
English to say
apple when more than one apple is referred to. It is of course equally ungrammatical
to say
apples when only one apple is referred to. English grammar makes a two-way distinction in
the way objects are referred to: individual objects and sets of objects are referred to differently. That
is, English has the grammatical dimension
NUMBER
with two values or grammatical
categories,
SINGULAR
and
PLURAL
. English nouns are
inflected for number, and number inflection
is
obligatory. Thus
three apple and
lots of person are ungrammatical in English.
When a dimension such as
NUMBER
is part of the grammar of a language, it often turns up
in more than one place. This
is true for
NUMBER
in English. Consider the following sentences.
An apple is on the table.
Some apples are on the table.
Apple and
apples are preceded by the words
an and
some. These words are called
indefinite
articles; both function roughly to say that the thing referred to is not already known to the hearer.
But they differ in another way:
an (or
a) is used only before singular nouns, while
some is used
before plural nouns (and also before some singular nouns; more about this below). That is, these
words also distinguish singular from plural. The verbs in the two sentences are also different.
Is is
appropriate only when the subject is singular, whereas
are is used when the subject is plural.
Again, the distinction between singular and plural matters somewhere in the grammar of the
language
COUNTABILITY
In English we can say
lots of milk,
lots of sand, and
lots of salt, but not
normally
lots of milks,
lots of sands, and
lots of salts. On the other hand, we can say
lots of
girls,
lots of trees, and
lots of rivers, but not normally
lots of girl,
lots of tree, and
lots of river.
What do you think is the difference between these two kinds of nouns?
There is another grammatical dimension with two values in English that is tied up with the
use of plural and the distinction between
a(n) and
some. Consider these sentences.
Some rice is on the table. Two piles of rice are on the table.
Notice that
rice is singular, and the verb is also in the singular form
is. In fact no matter
how much there is on the table, we still won't say
some rices. If the Speaker wants to mention the
amount of rice, they have to use another noun such as
pile or
bowl or
cup, putting
that noun in the
plural
Apparently English has two kinds of nouns. One kind,
count nouns, is used mainly
for
objects
(and for abstract things that are construed as object-like). In the singular these nouns
may be preceded by the article
a(n), and they are always pluralized when more than one of the
objects is referred to. The other kind,
mass nouns, is used mainly for
masses
(and for abstract
things that are construed as mass-like). These nouns are always singular except in the special
sense of 'multiple kinds' (for example,
wines referring to different brands or varieties of wine), and
they may be preceded by the article
some. Of course there is a gray area between clear cases of
objects and clear cases of masses,
and in this area, a noun can go either way. Thus
rice, as we have
seen, is a mass noun. But
pea, which designates something that, like rice, consists of small objects
usually gathered
together in a group, is a count noun.[3]
So English has the dimension of
COUNTABILITY
built into its grammar. But note that it
appears in the language in two places, in the grammatical forms that go with one or the other
category (
a(n) with singular,
some with plural for count;
some with singular and no plural for
mass)
and in the lexicon, where most nouns belong to one or the other type. That is, there is a
strong tendency in English for the count grammatical patterns to go with certain nouns (such as