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Number is the most underestimated of the grammatical categories. It is
deceptively simple yet the number system which philosophers, logicians
and many linguists take as the norm – namely an obligatory distinction
between singular and plural (as in cat versus cats) – is only one of a wide
range of possibilities to be found in languages around the world. Some
languages, for instance, make more distinctions than English, having
three, four or even five different values. Adopting a wide-ranging
perspective, Greville Corbett draws on some 250 languages to analyse the
possible systems of number. He reveals that the means for signalling
number are remarkably diverse and are put to a surprising range of
special additional uses. By surveying some of the riches of the world’s
linguistic resources this book makes a major contribution to the typology
of categories and demonstrates that languages are much more varied
than is generally recognised.
. is Professor of Linguistics at the University of
Surrey. He is author of Gender (1991), also in the Cambridge Textbooks
in Linguistics series, and co-editor of Heads in Grammatical Theory
(1993) and The Slavonic Languages (1993).
CAMBRIDGE TEXTBOOKS IN LINGUISTICS
General editors: S. R. Anderson, J. Bresnan, B. Comrie, ,
C. J. Ewen, R. Lass, D. Lightfoot, . Matthews, S. Romaine, N. ,
N. Vincent
NUMBER
In this series
. . Morphology Second edition
. Aspect
. . Semantic Theory
. Historical Linguistics
. , .-. , . Logic in Linguistics
. . The Physics of Speech
. . Sociolinguistics Second edition
. . Child Language
. . Syntax
. Transformational Syntax
. English Word-Formation
. . Pragmatics
. and . Discourse Analysis
. Introduction to the Grammar of English
. Phonology
. Te