Topic 13: La expresión de la cantidad.

TOPIC 13: La expresión de la cantidad

1. Introduction.
2. The plural.
3. Use of singular and plural in nouns.
4. Countable and uncountable nouns.
5. Indefinites
6. Conclusion.
7. Bibliography.

1. Introduction
Everyday people refer to figures, to dates, to quantities, etc
because, in fact, expressing quantities, amounts or numbers is just
an ordinary part of daily human communication. Therefore, it is a
fundamental part of a language, which deserves to draw the
attention of anyone wanting to learn a particular language.
Most nouns have both a singular and a plural form, expressing a
contrast between “one” and “more than one”, and these are known
as variable nouns. A small group of cases do not have a number
contrast, the invariable nouns.
Most variable nouns change from singular to plural in a
predictable way, usually described simply as “adding an –s”,
though, unfortunately, in reality this is not always the case. This is
the regular plural form, as seen in “dogs, magazines, books” and
thousands more words.
By contrast, there are only a few hundred nouns with an irregular
plural form, and they are the words in which the grammarians are
interested in. Why doesn’t Standard English say mouses, childs and
foots?

2. The plural
The only quantitative words in which distinction between the two
numbers exists or has existed in modern English period are:

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Topic 13: La expresión de la cantidad.
few/little (for instance, “few people/ little bread”), fewer/less (fewer
pins/ less courage), and much/many (as in “much money/ many
books).
The difference between much/many is like the difference
between countable and uncountable nouns. Countable nouns are the
names of separate objects, people, ideas, etc, which can be
counted. We can use cardinal numbers (one, two three) and the
articles “a/an” with them, but not with uncountable nouns.
Uncountable nouns are the names of materials, liquids, abstract
qualities, collections and other things which we see as masses

without clear boundaries, and not as separate objects. We cannot

use numbers with uncountable nouns, and most of them are
singular with no plural.
E.g.: “I haven’t got much money” (we cannot count money
unless we use another noun designed for counting money, such as
pounds or euros: “I haven’t got many pounds on me”).
The difference between few/little or between fewer/less is again
like the difference between countable and uncountable nouns.
E.g.: “There are fewer and fewer babies in Spain every year”
(“fewer” used with a countable noun).
“It seems as though there is less and less money for education
every year” (“less” used with an uncountable noun.
Notice that we say “a few” or “a little” to suggest that the
amount is enough anyway, whereas we say “few” and “little” to
suggest the other way round.
E.g.: “There are few students in this class” (= not enough).
“There are a few students in this class” (= that might be enough).
“There is little money I can give you” (=not enough). “There is a
little money in my savings account” (=that might be enough).
The adjective “several” is generally used to qualify a plural word
as in “several weeks or pounds”. “Both”, of course, is plural but “all”
and “whole” may be used with singular and plural nouns: “all the

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money/ all the cars”, “a whole year/ the whole lambs”. The two
numbers are differentiated in nouns, pronouns and verbs but not as
a rule in adjectives and never in adverbs. The only instance in which
one might feel inclined to talk of the plural of adverbs are “twice”
and “thrice”, but this expression is rarely used. These examples
may be considered as a plural of “once”.
As far as the plural in verbs is concerned, no distinction is made
between the 2 numbers except in the present tense and there it is
found in the 3rd person singular only, which generally ends in “-s”.
In the past simple we have the example “singular was” and “plural
were”, in all other verbs the plural is like the singular.
3. Use of singular and plural in nouns
The regular plural in nouns is formed by adding an “-s” suffix.
Let’s explain firs its pronunciation:
- If the noun ends in “-s” after bases ending in sibilants, it is
followed by an extra syllable pronounced then /iz/ as in “bus-
buses, horse-horses, size-sizes, phrase-phrases”.

- All nouns ending in a voiced consonant or a vowel add /z/as

in “bag-bags, bee-bees, player-players, grave-graves”.

- All other nouns ending in a voiceless consonant add /s/ as in

“hat-hats, month-months, cup-cups”.

The spelling rules are more complex. The plural suffix is written
“-s” after most nouns including nouns ending in silent “e”, such
as “plate-plates”. However, there are several types of exception:
- The ending is “-es” if there is no silent “-e” and the noun
ends in –s, -z, -x, -ch, and –sh as in “bus-buses, box-boxes,
church-churches, bush-bushes”:
- If the noun ends in “-o”, the plural is spelled “-os” in most
cases such as “ kilo-kilos, piano-pianos, radio-radios” but

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there are a few nouns which require the ending “-oes” as in
“potato-potatoes, hero-heroes, tomato-tomatoes”.
- If a noun ends in “-y”, with a preceding consonant, the “-y”
is replaced by “-i” and “-es” is added, as in “·sky-skies, baby-
babies, lady-ladies”. If there is only a preceding vowel, the
“–y” stays as in “way-ways, boy-boys” and also in proper
nouns “the three Marys”.
- We can also find in some words the doubling of consonants
as in “quiz-quizzes, fez-fezzes”.
We have just seen the pronunciation and spelling of the plural of
nouns. Let’s continue by explaining the irregular plurals and the
foreign plurals.
Irregular plurals
The particular plurals of some nouns have to be learnt as
individual lexical items, among them we can find:
- Seven nouns change their vowel (a process known as
mutation or umlaut): man-men, woman-women, foot-feet,
tooth-teeth, goose-geese, mouse-mice, louse-lice.
- Four nouns add “-en”: child-children, ox-oxen, brother-
brethren, aurochs-aurochsen.
- The following nouns ending in “-f” change their plurals into “-
ves” as in “calf-calves, scarf-scarves, thief-thieves, wife-
wives”. In some cases its usage it’s uncertain because, for
instance, we can find both “scarfs” with f and “scarves” with
–ves. We can also find exceptions such as “roof-roofs”.

Foreign plurals
Nouns which have been borrowed from foreign languages have a
particular problem. Some have adopted the regular plural ending,
some have kept the original foreign plural and some permit both.
There are no rules. People have to learn which form to use as they

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meet the words for the first time. Where there is a choice, the
classical plural is usually the more technical, learned, or formal as in
the case of “formulas vs. formulae” or “curriculum vs. curricula”.
We find many foreign words from Latin and Greek origin:
- Singular “-a”/ plural “-ae”: alga-algae, formula-formulae.
- Singular “-us” / plural “-i”: stimulus-stimuli, cactus-cacti.
- Singular “-us” / plural “-uses”: apparatus-apparatuses,
campus-campuses.
- Singular “-is” / plural “-es”: basis-bases, crisis-crises.
- Greek singular “-on” / plural “-a”: criterion-criteria,
phenomenon-phenomena.
- French plurals: bureau-bureaux, madam-mesdames.
- Italian plurals: piccolo-piccoli.
- Hebrew plurals: cherub-cherubim.

Many nouns do not show a contrast between singular and plural:

the invariable nouns. These are usually classified into two types:
those used only in the singular (also called singularia tantum) and
those used only in the plural (pluralia tantum).
Nouns that are only used in the singular are the following: many
concrete mass nouns (gold, silver, mercury) and abstract nouns
(courage, happiness) never take a plural suffix.
The same applies to proper nouns, and to many collective nouns
such as “police, cattle, clergy”.
We can also find words which were originally plurals and now
they are used in singular, although they still have the final –s and
this is sometimes misleading: the word “news”, some diseases
“mumps, measles”, some subjects and sciences “physics, politics”,
some games “billiards, bowls” or some proper names “Brussels,
Wales”.
Regarding the words that are only used in the plural we find, for
example, instruments or tools such as “binoculars, glasses, scissors”
and pieces of clothing that consist of two equal parts which are

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joined together such as “trousers, tights, jeans, dungarees”. The
noun of which they are head can be made singular and countable by
means of “a pair of” as in “a pair of trousers”.
There are a few words that have the same form for both singular
and plural and in some cases, only the context can help us to
know which meaning is intended as for

instance “This sheep looks small” or “All these sheep are mine”.
The word “dice” is now used like “sheep” both as a singular and a
plural: “The dice is on the table refers to one” and “The dice are
on the table” refers to more than one. The singular usage, known
from the 14th century, is now found only in the idiom “the die is
cast”.
The same happens to names of nationalities ending in “-ese” as
in “Chinese, Portuguese”), and also nouns denoting measure or
quantity normally have zero plural when they are pre-modifiers
in noun phrases: “a six-mile walk, a tend pound note”.

4 Countable and uncountable nouns

Countable nouns are the names of separate objects, people,
ideas, etc which can be counted: “a table/two tables, “a
newspaper /four newspapers”.
Uncountable nouns, as I have previously said, are the names of
materials, abstract qualities and other things which we see as
masses without clear boundaries and not as separate objects.
Count nouns cannot stand alone in the singular “table is broken”,
but uncountable nouns can as in “Chess is fun”.
Count nouns occur in the singular with “a” as in “a book” and
uncountable nouns with “some” as in “some music”. Both can occur
with the “the book/the music·”.
We have to take into account that a good command of English
involves knowing whether a noun is countable or not. However, to
make matters worse, not all nouns are either simply countable or

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uncountable. This is because many nouns have both countable and
uncountable uses, sometimes with a different meaning or sense.
“Cake”, for instance, is a count noun in this sentence “Would you
like a cake?” but not in this one “Do you like cake? There are many
examples: “I’ve bought some bricks” in contrast with “It’s built of
brick” or “I’ve had some odd experiences” vs. “I’ve not had much
experience”.
Inside this point, we have to talk about partitive constructions.
They are quantifying constructions that are made up of indefinite
article “a” plus noun (denoting some type of measurement) plus
preposition “of”. We could distinguish two basic types of partitive
constructions:
- Non-countable nouns: they include one non-countable noun
which always refers to one single unit, not to a group or a
whole: “a piece of luck, a lump of sugar, a block of ice, a loaf
of bread”.
- Plural countable nouns: they include nouns which always
refer to a whole list of items, things or persons: “a flock of
sheep, a pride of lions, a bunch of teenagers”.
- Finally, we could classify these partitive constructions
according to their frequency of use:
More “restrictive” partitive constructions: they are used
with a small number of nouns: “a pack of dogs, a cloud of flies, a
muster of peacocks, etc”
More “versatile” partitive constructions: they can be used
with a much wider number of nouns: “a piece of
bread/baggage/advice, a herd of cattle/elephants, an item of
news/furniture/clothing”.
At any rate, it is important to notice that it is necessary to learn
by heart the partitive construction which corresponds to each of
these nouns, for it is totally idiomatic and usually only one specific
partitive noun is possible from a grammatical point of view.
5. Indefinites

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Let us classify them according to a morphological and syntactic
point of view.
As far as morphology is concerned, we find:
- compound pronouns. They can only work as pronouns. They
are composed of three possible morphemes (-body, -one or –thing)
and four possible lexemes (every-, some-, any- or no-). For
instance, “everyone, everybody, everything, somebody, someone,
something and so on.
The only difference between compound pronouns formed by the
suffix-body and those formed by suffix –one is that the latter is
more formal. Apart from that remark, they mean exactly the same
and are always exchangeable.
- Of-pronouns: they are distinguished by the following
features:
They can be followed by a partitive of-phrase, for example,
“Some of us are very disappointed with him”.
They can be employed as pronouns or determiners. For instance:
“Have you got any money?” or “I haven’t got any”.
Some of the most basic of-pronouns indefinites are: all of, every
one, some of, any of, either of, much of, least of, each of, etc.
The difference between “all” and “every” is that the former is
used with a plural form and the latter is used with a singular
form. Besides, “all” can be used with certain determiners and
with uncountable nouns such as “all the music”, whereas “every”
cannot. Finally, “all” can be used with place names and some
singular countable nouns to mean “every part of”. E.g.: “I’ve
written to all of my friends” not “I’ve written to every of my
friends” or “All London was waiting for the football match” not
“Every London was waiting for the football match”.

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On the other hand, for example, we find that in many cases
“each” and “every” can be used without much difference in
meaning: “You look more beautiful each/every time I see you”.
According to syntactic behaviour, indefinite numerals can be
divided into four categories: universal, assertive, non-assertive and
negative.
- Universal: are those indefinites used to refer to all the
elements, persons, things, etc, of a group. “All, both, each
and every” are used for that purpose in English.
- Assertive words are those words used to bias towards an
affirmative or positive interpretation of an affirmative
sentence or of a question. If I say “Would you like something
to drink?” I think s/he would, so I offer him/her something to
drink.
- Non-assertive words are those words used not to bias
towards an affirmative or positive interpretation of negative
sentences or questions. If I say “Would you like anything to
drink?” I don’t know really, so I just asked. S/he may say
yes or no, but I have no reason to expect one or the other.
- Negative words: English has an additional way to create
negative sentences by simply using the adverb “no” or by
using specific pronouns (e.g.: none) as in “I have no
brothers/ I have none”.
There are also many other frequent indefinites to express
quantity. For example, there are lots of words meaning “many” such
as “plenty, quite a lot, a great deal of, a large number, a lot of, etc.
And regarding words meaning “some” we find “certain, several,
quite a few, hardly any, a small amount of”, etc.
6. Conclusion
To sum up the topic I would like to say that learning the
quantifiers and the ways to express quantity in English is essential
for a good command of the English language, since an ordinary part
of daily human communication involves the use of many quantifiers.

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In the same way, knowing how to form the plural of nouns as
well as the irregular and foreign plurals, and also knowing the
difference between countable and uncountable nouns are
fundamental grammatical issues that Ss must learnt to achieve a
good mastery of the language.
Therefore, we as teachers should give a list of the most
important quantifiers to our students and provide them with plenty
of exercises to practice them.
7. Bibliography
-Crystal, David. The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of the English
Language. CUP,2003

- Quirk et al. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language.

Longman, 1985
-Swan, Michael. Practical English Usage. OUP.1995
-

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