Basic English Syntax with Exercises

singular noun

1.3.4.2 Nouns

From a morphological point of view, nouns are less varied than verbs, having just two forms, singular and plural:

1.3.4.2 Nouns

Exactly the opposite problem is caused by examples such as scissors and trousers, which appear to be nouns which lack a singular form (*scissor, *trouser). This might be more of a semantic problem rather than a grammatical one however, as the objects to which these words refer are inherently plural in some respect: scissors have two blades and trousers have two legs. Moreover, without this plural aspect to the meaning, the object ceases to be describable in the same way: something with one blade cannot be described as scissors (or scissor for that matter) and something with one leg is not trousers (nor trouser). Again, it is possible to find the singular form of such words used, though in very limited contexts. When two nouns are put together to form a single compound noun, the preceding noun must be in its singular form:

1.3.4.2 Nouns

There are some exceptions, e.g. dogsbody.) Note this restriction holds whether or not the plural form would be more appropriate semantically, as is the case with armchair which tend to have more than one arm! When an inherently plural noun is used as the first noun in a compound, it too appears in its singular form:

4.1 Why the Noun is not the Head of the DP

In these cases both the nouns and the determiners are marked for number and so it is difficult to say where the number feature of the whole phrase is projected from. Indeed, even in those cases such as (8a) and (8b) where it looks as though the number is projected from the noun, we could argue that the determiner the is ambiguously marked for singular or plural and, like the other determiners, when it is singular it can only accompany a singular noun and when it is plural it can only accompany a plural noun. The issue therefore rests on which we take to be the head: the determiner or the noun. For this reason, we cannot use these observations to argue in favour of one or the other having head status but we must look elsewhere to resolve the issue.