![]() ![]() What we have been looking at in the above paragraph is the morphological properties of words: the various forms we find for different words. Plural forms are restricted to the category noun and other categories do not have them. These words simply do not have a plural form. While not all of these words are ill formed by themselves, none of them can be considered to be the plural versions of the words in (9). By contrast, consider the following, based on the words in (9): (11) Therefore we can talk about different friendlinesses. However, it is perfectly possible to conceptualise different types of friendliness: one can be friendly by saying good morning to someone as you pass in the street, without necessarily entering into a deeper relationship with them other forms of friendliness may demand more of an emotional commitment. What is strange here is not the grammatical concepts of singular or plural, but that the semantic distinction is not one typically made. Consider a more strange case: friendliness– friendlinesses. This is the distinction between singular and plural and in general this distinction can apply to virtually all nouns. The distinction between these two words is that while the first refers to a single thing, the second refers to more than one of them. The idea–ideas case is the most straightforward. Alongside these we also have the related words: (10)Īlthough some of these may sound strange concepts, they are perfectly acceptable forms. Chapter 1 Grammatical Foundations: Wordsġ.2.3 Morphological criteria for determining categoryĬonsider the set of words in (8) again. ![]()
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