English Language & Usage Asked by Henry Woody on February 7, 2021
I’m looking for a word (or small number of words) that is the general term for singularizing or pluralizing a word.
I’ve thought about "inflection"/"inflect", but inflection encompasses more than just modifying for number. From the Wikipedia page on Inflection:
In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation, in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and definiteness.
Is there a word that encompasses both singularize and pluralize that is also more specific than inflection? Or is there a way to make "inflection" more specific, like "numerical/quantity inflection"?
The reason I’m asking is to find a good name for a function (programming) that takes a word and a number and returns the correct version of the word (either singular or plural). Building upon the package Pluralize.
I've found that "grammatical number" seems to be the correct general term to encompass both singular and plural (and possibly more like dual) with the right amount of specificity.
From the Wikipedia article on Grammatical Number (emphasis mine):
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one", "two", or "three or more"). English and other languages present number categories of singular or plural, both of which are cited by using the hash sign (#) or by the numero signs "No." and "Nos." respectively. Some languages also have a dual, trial, and paucal number or other arrangements.
For the function, I've gone with toGrammaticalNumber to represent the ideas of "to singular" and "to plural".
Answered by Henry Woody on February 7, 2021
I think of "enumerate", which means "establish the number of (something)" in a formal setting. See enumerate 1.1.
Though, I am unsure if this is apt in this case.
Answered by niamulbengali on February 7, 2021
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