h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Statements about singular and zero quantities are probably the most common numerical references we make in everyday usage. Questions of supply and demand and our curious apelike observations on unique people, things and situations will always be 'remark'-able. Therefore syntax in these subject areas will suffer the most use and abuse. Usage, I think we have agreed, is the only authourity, but it has a way of bending and dulling the tools of the trade.

Unturned stones should not be left.
No fools like old fools.
There is nothing like peaches (and cream).
No men are an island.
Nothing is to be gained and there is nothing to fear.
An apple a day...
Once bitten, twice shy.

But compound subjects also take a singular verb too often for my ear. The expression 'one and only' cries outs to have a plural verb form, being the compound sum of one plus only. But we accept that Corporations, (music)group names and certain multi-parted phenomena are usually treated as a singular entity even though they are (and we know they are) composites of more than one. Thunder and lightning is an example.

A Smith & Wesson was found wrapped in bloody rags along with a hammer and knife.
A hue and cry went round the streets.
No other clue was discovered.
We have zero suspects in custody.
It remains a mystery.


~j~

I've heard 'no man is an island' before, but never 'no men are an island'

Also 'There's no fool like an old fool' rather than 'No fools like old fools'

Or was that the point?

>> Or was that the point? <<

I was indeed trying to illustrate my assertion that we hairy apes seem to make a lot of observations of things numbered as 'zero' (nothing, none, no man, no one) or 'one'. We always seem compelled to comment on the singular and unique, but we also tend to compound more than one thing into a single conceptual unit. We generalise and we unify concepts and bend grammar to add tension to the thought.

Many of these observations have become very familiar expressions (some even qualify as cliches) but we are so accustomed to hearing them we don't think twice about the accuracy of the verb. We hardly blink at the use of indefinite articles or the singular pronoun 'it' when the antecedent is actually a group of things.

By saying there 'are no fools like old fools' I hoped to draw attention to this fact by invoking a clash in memories of the old saying that "there IS NO fool like AN old fool" which is a classic of the 'zero' exception of the 'one' actually representing the 'many'.
(aka: generalisation)

An apple a day for example is really a whole lot of apples over time. The phrase 'an apple a day' allows us to see the singular apple unit and use the singular verb, but we know it actually represents an ongoing dietary regimen and that no single apple is responsible for good health. At least this old fool certainly hopes no one really expects a single apple to do anything but spoil the bunch.

~jwf~

Cheers jwf, that helps clean stuff up a bit, I was laughing at the concept of "Some hues and cries went out..." Or should that be Hughs in New York?

But the best bit of your posting was

"...we hairy apes..."

At last, jwf comes clean as the first educated chimp on HooToo



Humans being usually styled the hairless, or if you remember the Desmond Morris book, naked apes.

I just couldn't resist jwf, I know, I'm a bad person, sorry T

Yeah - "Hairy Ape" - speak for yourself!!!!!!!

But thanks for that close look at every day expressions. I wondered why I always felt uncomfortable with "An apple a day" - now it's been pointed out to me I realise why. It was a purely grammatical thing. I have nothing against apples. Nothing like a Cox's Orange Pippin for getting your pecker up.

Whatever a pecker is.

Needs must!

~j~

As visitors to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/n2g2/ will be aware, jwf has (or has had) one of the finest facial hirsute adornments seen, apart from on a nocturnal yule-tide visitor. I am sure that his comment was self referential, not carelessness nor a slight to any other ape related entity.

TC
You and I cannot keep our peckers up. We haven't got one.
To pour cold water on the "0 rows" question, I think it was programmer's convenience. You'd have to add a small bit of extra code to make the distinction. I'd also like to throw in "There are 2 students waiting to see you" v. "There are no students waiting to see you" (therefore you can go on posting to this erudite thread)
Finally, "Some aunts are tall, and some are not tall; that is surely a matter an aunt may be allowed to decide for herself" Likewise linguists. IRL, I'm nearly a foot shorter than Edith Evans who was the most celebrated aunt, but on here I rteckon my height is eminent.

Can we work up the proposition that no + singular versus no + plural varies with the expectation of the likely number who could be affected.
Clear as mud. Let's try examples:
"When the children arrived at the grotto, there was no Father Christmas to greet them." (continuing a previous allusion) Well, how many would you expect to be there?
"No children were waiting when Father Christmas arrived at the grotto." Ditto.
Well, it's a working hypothesis.

I always feel very virtuous when I use a singular verb with the subject "none", and see the expressions on the surrounding faces:
"None of us has the foggiest idea where to go."

Surely there must be rules for words that 'appear' to be plural...?

Take the following words, which all end in "-ics".
They might appear to be plural but test that assumption by using them as nouns in a complete sentence. Try them as both 'subject' and 'object' of any appropriate verb. You'll soon discover for yourselves which case of the verb you use reflexively. And perhaps subsequently you'll think about which is considered 'grammatically correct' and finally, and most importantly, which way you actually prefer to say it once you've thought about it. It's that third one you gotta hang on to, and live with. It's your 'usage'. It makes you an authourity.

Plastics
Electronics
Calisthenics
Elastics
Arithmetics
Statistics
Ballistics
Linguistics

Advanced and mature students may also wanna try:

Alcoholics
Aesthetics
Rustics
Phonetics
Prosthetics

~j~

I must say the idea of rustic prosthetics fills me with horror. Perhaps I'm not mature enough to cope

Try "collective" for nouns that appear to be plural but function as singular.
It is interesting (well, I find it interesting) thatwords for groups of people (team,group,audience,government etc) can now be followed (even in my idiolect)by either singular or plural verbs, depending on whether the folk are being thought of as individuals or not. It wasn't always so.

The Police somehow don't fit into that one, do they?

"The police is looking for an eloquent Canadian with a beard" would illustrate this. It doesn't sound right.

But this is very difficult to explain to a German. They can't see any reason for using the plural. The police is the police is a single entity and entitled only to the singular.

TC,
As an aside, is the police force, oops! service, in Germany a national service or (as in GB) a bunch of regional constabularies?

What about quantitative(?) nouns, ones you can have only some of, not one of (not the same way, anyway). Hmm... I just noticed that whenever you put two quantities of something described in this way together, (e.g., "water", "Silly Putty") they tend to merge into one? Is this why they call "money" a liquid asset? You can't have "a money", but you can have "a dollar", just like you could have "a gallon". I suppose the only reason you don't have "a dollar of money" is because a dollar isn't really used to describe anything else. Though I suppose you could have a pound of money... Is this why they switched to the metric system? Because when selling things by weight, charging "a pound for five pounds" was too confusing?

Pardon the incoherency, it's way past my bedtime. I will most likely regret this posting in the morning.

This is, for some reason, always difficult for Germans to understand. I always use the comparison with mashed potatoes (which you can't count) and chips, which you can.

Although it's entirely unnecessary, because the German words for "much" (applies to mashed potatoes, water, money, etc) and "many" (applies to chips, apples, people, anything numerable) are just as different and apply in exactly the same ways.

For some reason English people can't latch on to it either when learning German. "When do you say "viel" and when do you say "viele" " I am continually being asked.

"Viel" is "much"
"Katze" is "cat"
"Viele" is "many"
"Auto" is "car"
"Kartoffel" is "potato"
"Kartoffelbrei" is "mashed potato"

If you can learn one bit of vocab, you can learn another.

Sorry. Rant over.

None of which answers Twinkle's question. Was it a question?

On the question of countable nouns, when I joined h2g2 the disclaimer said 'The majority of the content on h2g2 is generated by h2g2's researchers...'. I pointed out to the ptb that 'majority' has to be used with a countable noun, which 'the content' is not. You can say 'the majority of the entries' but not 'of the content'. I also mentioned, btw, that 'majority' is sometimes wrongly used, as here. It means anything more than an equal share, or anything more than 50% of the total, whereas it is sometimes, as here, erroneously used to suggest much more than that. So I suggested changing it to what it is now, which is more accurate, shorter, and also clearer. (I also got them to change 'generated' to 'created', but that was just a personal preference, which they obviously agreed with.)

Bels

Oh, while I'm passing by I'll just mention that in addition to singular and plural, a number of languages has a third 'number': dual, a separate form used for pairs of things. If you talk about, eg, your hands, or her eyes, you would use a form of the word that is neither singular nor plural.

Did you notice I deliberately said 'a number of languages has...' - sounds totally wrong, doesn't it? Whereas 'a group of languages has...' sounds passably correct, as indeed it is.

Bels

So how do we elegantly say "more than half" or "most" of something we can't count?

What's inelegant about 'most' or 'more than half'?

How about 'the greater part'?

Most of the cake was eaten.
The greater part of the cake was eaten.
More than half the cake was eaten.

- Seems ok. But not 'the majority of the cake'!