Singulative Systems

This chapter gives an overview of singulative systems, focusing on a few languages, including Arabic, Breton, Welsh. First, we introduce relevant data showing how a singulative noun is formed from a collective noun or a mass term. Second, we show that it is possible for singulative nouns to be pluralized and that, in some languages (e.g. Arabic), this plural contrasts semantically with the collective form. Third, we review existing accounts of singulatives and show that one main issue in the literature is whether the singulative operation is an inflectional or a derivational operation. Singulatives are interesting because they shed light on number and gender and show that, morphologically, the singular is not always unmarked.