Number

Revision as of 15:07, 14 January 2010

Number is a category that typically corresponds to the actual quantity of the referents of a given noun.

Natural Language

In natural languages, number may be realised by grammatical affixes (such as "s" for plural, in English) or by quantifiers (such as "a couple of", "many", etc).
In the UNLarium framework, the grammatical category of number may assume the following values:

The plural (PLR) subsumes more specific number values and should be used when there is no particular information on the quantity of the reference.

books = PLR

pants = PLR

glasses = PLR

Examples

• singular (SNG): book, city, kiss
• singulare tantum (SNGT): furniture
• plural (PLR): books, cities, kisses
• plurale tantum (PLRT): clothes, measles
• invariant (INV): series, species

UNL

In UNL, number is to be represented by attributes, if marked. The number attribute values are the following:

@singular is the default number value and may be omitted

book = book (or book.@singular)

number, when lexicalized, should be omitted as well

two glasses (=drinking vessel) = glasses.@pl

a pair of glasses (=spectacles) = glasses (and not glasses.@pl)

Examples

• @singular
  • book = book or book.@singular
• @pl
  • books = book.@pl
  • children = child.@pl
  • livres = livre.@pl
• @paucal
  • a few books = book.@paucal
  • some books = book.@paucal
• @multal
  • many books = book.@multal
  • several books = book.@multal