The category of number (the Noun).

A noun is said to be in the singular number when it denotes one person or thing; it is said to be in the plural number when it denotes more than one person or thing.

ME distinguish between 2 numbers singular & plural. So the category of number is expressed by the binary private opposition. The strong member is the pl. and the weak member is the singular. The productive ways of expressing the number the morpheme –S with allophones [s], [z], [iz]

The productive way of expressing the singular is by zero morpheme (coverall morpheme). The other ways are vowel interchange men-man (replacive morpheme). The archaic suffix en-ox-oxen, child-children and also individual singular and plural suffixes of borrowed nouns: formula-formulae.

The cases of homonymy (fish-fish)

The semantic nature of the difference between singular and the plural presents difficulty of interpretation ex: three houses and three hours.

Three houses-are three separate object and three hours are a continuous period of time as well as three miles, three acres. Here we distinguish “discrete plural” and “plural of measure” ex: water-waters of the Atlantic. Here we refer to a geographical idea, while the water of the Atlantic refers to its physical or chemical properties. Here we see an additional difference of meaning. Talking about the number we’re to mention the process of lexicalization, the essence of which is developing a completely a new meaning of the noun in the plural ex: custom-customs.

We must consider 2 types of noun - Pluralia Tantum & Singularia Tantum.

Among the PT are the nouns: trousers, scissors, etc. The direct opposition of PT is ST. Among this, we must note some nouns denoting material substance, milk, butter and names of abstract notions-peace, usefulness with this nouns the predicate verb is always singular.

There exist exceptions when the above mention nouns may have a plural form ex; wine-wines (to denote several special kinds of wine), beauty-beauties (of nature) when we mean the objects exhibiting this quality ex; iron-irons

According to Blokh we should discern absolute plural, the absolute plural form is peculiar to the uncountable subclass of PT nouns. The absolute plural cannot directly combine with numerals. The absolute plural by way of functional oppositional reduction can be represented in 3 ways:

1. In countable nouns having the form of the singular
   ex: the families were gathered round the table.
2. In countable nouns having the form of the plural
   ex: I lit cigarette after cigaret