Collective Nouns

Abstract

Collective nouns such as family, group, and herd combine properties associated with singularity or ‘oneness’ and properties associated with plurality, on all levels of grammar (lexical–conceptual, morphosyntactic, and semantic). Because of this property, they provide a unique window into the various factors that influence the expression and interpretation of grammatical number. This chapter starts out with a general introduction to the various conceptual and grammatical properties of collectives as well as the various ways in which they have been described and classified in different linguistic subfields. Then, it zooms in on their formal semantics, focusing on two central questions in particular: first, are collective nouns semantic plurals that are sometimes forced to behave like singulars, singulars that are sometimes allowed to behave like plurals, or simply ambiguous? And, second, how is the interpretation of an NP as either an indivisible atom or a quantifiable set influenced by morphosyntactic number marking?