Number in English – motivation of selected subcategories of nouns | Grzegorz Drożdż

The presentation aims to showcase some preliminary results from the research focused on one of the peculiarities of the English language – number and the subcategories of nouns that it entails. This issue is worth exploring, because traditionally these subcategories are considered arbitrary (e.g. Bloomfield 1933: 269). However, as can be seen in the preliminary results from the study of two of those categories (uninflected plural-only nouns and zero plurals), if we integrate findings from psychology, sociology, and history, the claim concerning their arbitrariness starts losing its ground.