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In linguistics, 'collective number' and 'singulative number' are terms used when the grammatical number which represents a plural quantity is the unmarked form of a noun. This is the opposite of the more common situation (present in the English language) where the singular of a noun is unmarked, and the plural is marked.
The collective number should not be confused with collective nouns.

Contents

Examples

See also

Examples

Welsh has two systems of grammatical number. Singular/plural nouns correspond to the singular/plural number system of English. Welsh noun plurals are unpredictable and formed in several ways: by adding a suffix to the end of the word (usually ''-au''), e.g. ''tad'' and ''tadau'', through vowel mutation, e.g. ''bachgen'' and ''bechgyn'', or through a combination of the two, e.g. ''chwaer'' and ''chwiorydd''.
The other system of number is the collective/unit system. The nouns in this system form the singular by adding the suffix ''-yn'' (for masculine nouns) or ''-en'' (for feminine nouns) to the plural. Most nouns which belong in this system are frequently found in groups, for example, ''plant'' "children" and ''plentyn'' "a child", or ''coed'' "forest" and ''coeden'' "a tree". In dictionaries, the plural is often given first.
Some languages have collectives but no grammatical plural. For example, Chinese, Japanese (except in a small number of cases), and Korean do not have plurals. However, groups of people can be referred to, either by context or periphrastically (i.e., with additional words or phrases).
An example from Japanese:

★ ''Tanaka-san'' "Mr/Ms Tanaka"

★ ''Tanaka-san-tachi'' "The Tanakas", "Tanaka & Co.", "Tanaka and friends", etc.

See also

★ Grammatical number

★ Plural