Thread:User talk:CodeCat/bantu/reply (13)

It's quite clear that both English and Zulu distinguish singular and plural morphologically, in that there is a very clear difference in the shape of a noun with singular meaning, and of that same noun with plural meaning, so that speakers are unlikely to mistake a singular noun for its plural or vice versa (except for nouns like fish). It's also quite clear that the shape of a noun is usually unambiguously singular or plural: at least in Zulu, you can see whether a noun has singular or plural meaning by looking at its prefix (contrast Latin feminine singular -a and neuter plural -a, where -a can be singular or plural). This also applies to English (ending in -s means plural), but it's is actually less consistent, because a noun ending in -s is usually be a plural, but it could also be a singular (this fact has historically led some singular nouns like peas to be reinterpreted as plurals). So, at least in the general case, if we think about what makes an English noun plural, it's the fact that it has some morphological feature that makes speakers think of it as a plural. In the same way, Zulu speakers think of nouns beginning with ama- as plural, because most nouns with that prefix have plural meaning. (One point to add is agreement: both English and Zulu inflect other words in concordance with the singular-ness or plural-ness of the noun. That is more a matter of grammar than of morphology, because in English some plurals don't look like plurals (men, feet), but give away their plural-ness by their agreement. Zulu, too, has some nouns with identical prefix (class 1a and 11 both have u-), but differing in agreement, so here too the agreement gives away the true class.)

That is the most common case. Now what happens when you take a word that doesn't fit the pattern? If a noun has a plural meaning but has the shape (noun prefix) of a singular noun, then we call it a collective noun. But if you have a noun that, morphologically, gives the impression of being plural because it looks like lots of other words which we understand to be plural (ending in -s, beginning in ama-), but then give it a meaning that isn't really very plural-ish? You get a plurale tantum.

So I don't really think it's a matter of trying to apply the grammar of one language to another...