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Are there any collective nouns among lexical plurals in English?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2017

Laure Gardelle
Laure Gardelle*
Affiliation:
Université Grenoble Alpes, France
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

The grammatical tradition has excluded lexical plurals from the category of collective nouns on the sole basis of their morphology (no discrepancy between singular form and so-called plural reference); but this criterion has led to hesitations, some linguists including, for instance, cattle or people. This study therefore considers other, semantic, criteria to establish more convincingly whether lexical plurals that denote pluralities of entities may be collective nouns. Relying on distinctions between meronymy and (non-taxonomic) hyperonymy, collectiveness and cohesion, and (a) crew (collective sense) / (several) crew (uninflected plural), it concludes that they are definitely not collective nouns, but aggregate nouns (or senses of nouns). Two sets are established. Some, mainly denoting humans, typically originate in the collective sense of the noun through a coercion mechanism; the others, mainly denoting objects, result from an operation of abstraction. For some of these, the notion of “hyperonyms of plural classes” is put forward.

Résumé

La tradition grammaticale a exclu les pluriels lexicaux de la catégorie des noms collectifs sur la seule base de leur morphologie (pas de divergence entre la forme singulière et la supposée pluralité de référence). Mais ce critère a conduit à des hésitations : certains linguistes, par exemple, y incluent cattle ‘bétail’ ou people ‘gens’. Cette étude examine donc d'autres critères, c'est-à-dire les critères sémantiques, pour établir de façon plus convaincante si les pluriels lexicaux qui dénotent des pluralités d'entités pourraient être des noms collectifs. S'appuyant sur les distinctions entre la méronymie et l'hyperonymie (non taxonomique), entre la collectivité et la cohésion, et entre a crew ‘un équipage’ (sens collectif) et several crew ‘plusieurs membres d’équipage’ (pluriel non marqué), il conclut qu'ils ne sont de toute évidence pas des noms collectifs, mais des noms (ou sens de noms) d'agrégat. Deux groupes sont établis : certains, qui dénotent principalement des êtres humains, proviennent généralement du sens collectif du nom par un mécanisme de coercition; les autres, qui dénotent principalement des objets, résultent d'une opération d'abstraction. Pour certains d'entre eux, la notion d'hyperonymes de classes plurielles est proposée.

Keywords

collective nounslexical pluralsaggregate nounshyperonymymeronymynoms collectifspluriels lexicauxnoms d'agrégathyperonymieméronymie
Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 63 , Issue 1 , March 2018 , pp. 25 - 41
Copyright
© Canadian Linguistic Association/Association canadienne de linguistique 2017 

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Footnotes

I wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their most helpful comments on the first draft of this article.

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