News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Why is zero plural? (2024) by dominicrose on Wednesday January 22, 2025 @08:33AM (#42792618)
"0" is the same thing as "no" and thus it is a negation of something. Why would you remove the plural from something if your intention is to negate it? If someone drinks your beers, then you have no beers because it's a negation of multiple beers. If you don't know how many beers there were then it's likely there was more than one anyway.

ps: we can also say the beers were mutiplied by 0.

Re:Why is zero plural? (2024) by RiverCrochet on Wednesday January 22, 2025 @10:06AM (#42793578)
"0 x" is only valid if x is a countable noun.

"No x" is valid for any noun.

Liquids are an example of non-countable nouns - "I have no water" but "I have zero oranges."

Some thoughts:

- English requires the use of an article with singular nouns, because the question of "which X" is important.

- This question is impossible for plural nouns (no "which X" when X is 2 or more), and where the noun doesn't actually exist - because it's meant as a type or because it physically doesn't exist.

- So these situations require no article to be used.

- English is so flexible that a phrase like "two oranges" can be "singularized" and therefore a sentence like this is possible: "Take the two oranges and put them here." What's implied and meant here is "1 group of two oranges" so it's still consistent.

- That's all brought up because it's another place in the language where zero and plural obey the same logic.

Re:Why is zero plural? (2024) by thaumasiotes on Wednesday January 22, 2025 @11:19AM (#42794396)
> English requires the use of an article with singular nouns, because the question of "which X" is important.

Well, that obviously can't be true, or other languages would have the same requirement.

Re:Why is zero plural? (2024) by RiverCrochet on Wednesday January 22, 2025 @01:51PM (#42796185)
I guess I should have made that say "important to English."

Languages definitely impose "models" for various things and those are certainly different amongst each language.