Mismatches between grammatical number and conceptual numerosity: A number-decision experiment on collective nouns, number neutralization, pluralia tantum, and idiomatic plurals

Abstract

Grammatical number marking does not always match with the actual, conceptual numerosity of entities to which the word refers. This is the case in Finnish, which has multiple ways of expressing numerosity. In the chronometric number-decision task that we conducted, we used the following morphological stimulus types: singular, neutral (with a possessive suffix that neutralizes the grammatical number distinction) and plural nouns, with the following semantic (cognitive) types of numerosity expression: ordinary nouns, collective nouns, pluralia tantum, and idiomatic plural forms. The main finding is that all stimulus classes are positioned on a cline of numerosity between one and many (with ordinary singulars and plurals marking the two terminal points), although Finnish has only two grammatical number categories, singular, and plural. Moreover, it appears that subjects have an intuition about the frequency of use of singular and plural forms, even in the case where the words are presented in a morphologically neutralized form. This is seen especially in the cases where the referent of a test item was locally marked as ‘one’ or ‘two’, as in the body-part nouns ‘navel’-poss and ‘eye’-poss.