First Year Grammar: Lecture Ten

Number

Invariable nouns

1. Invariable:

2. singular invariables: silver, music, Peter, news,…+ is

3. plural invariables: glasses, thanks, cattle, the

        poor,…+ are 

2. variable:

3. regulars plurals: cat, tree, river,.. 

4. irregular plurals: shelf, man, ox, thesis,

         phenomenon, datum,…

invariable nouns ending in –s: these words do not express plural, in other words have no ( direct) singular nouns:

• 1.Common words ending in s, e.g. News

• 2.Some diseases like mumps and measles

• 3.Some subject nouns such as linguistics,

•       phonetics, etc.

• 4. some games as darts, billiards, etc.

 5- Some proper nouns: the United Nations, Wales,…

plural invariable nouns

summation plurals ( plural have no singular form): The ‘s’ at the end of such words is not addition but it is a part of the word. There is a long list of such words, for example: trousers, glasses, pants, and so on. Each one of them can be expressed as:
    A pair of ….
    a pair of trousers …. Three pairs of trousers……… ten pairs of trousers:
  – Your jeans are too tight.
  it is similar to the idea of imposing countability on non- count nouns.

• other “ pluralia tantum” in-s: nouns that occur only in plural: arms, ashes, savings,…

• 
  unmarked plurals:

•    cattle ( many cattle but not e.g. five cattle), police, etc. 

•  – many cattle are suffering from a disease called BSE.

•  – the staff are on strike. Variable nouns
  4.36: Regular plurals

•  

compounds: some nouns consist of more than one word, these nouns are called compound nouns. There are three possible ways to change them into plural:

•   a. to pluralize the first noun as in : passer by ….. passers- by,      man of war  …… men of war

•  b. to pluralize the last noun as in : woman hater …. Woman haters

•  c. to pluralize both parts ( the first and the last noun) as in : man servant  ….. men servants.

•  

Irregular plurals

• 
  Basis  …. Bases

•          Hypothesis …. Hypotheses

•           Life …. Lives

•          Self  ….. Selves

•      but not: belief.. beliefs, safe… safes,…

•     Both acceptable: for example

•              Dwarf  ….. Dwarfs …….  Dwarves  

•              Scarf  …. Scarfs     ………     Scarves