'Male'/'female' is to 'gender' as 'plural'/'singular' is to ?
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4Number, as shown in Collins:13. (Grammar) a grammatical category for the variation in form of nouns, pronouns, and any words agreeing with them, depending on how many persons or things are referred to, esp as singular or plural in number and in some languages dual or trial – Edwin Ashworth Apr 28 '15 at 15:47
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3http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_number – Apr 28 '15 at 15:47
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2Note, by the way, that 'male' and 'female' are not genders in the grammatical sense: the terms are 'masculine' and 'feminine'. – StoneyB on hiatus Apr 28 '15 at 16:06
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Male/female is to gender as singular/plural is to number.
- In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one", "two", or "three or more"). In many languages, including English, the number categories are singular and plural. Some languages also have a dual number or other arrangements.
Edit: credit to Edwin's and Josh's comments, which I hadn't read when I posted this answer.
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English used to have dual pronouns for us two and you two, and it has, in fact, retained dual both. – Anonym Apr 28 '15 at 16:42
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I try to forestall answers to questions that are (at least borderline) ELL. – Edwin Ashworth Apr 28 '15 at 16:54
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1Masculine/feminine/neuter is to gender, as singular/plural is to number, as present/past is to tense, as first/second/third is to person, as positive/comparative/superlative is to degree, as he/his/him -- nominative/possessive/objective is to case. That's about it for inflectional categories in English, though. – John Lawler Apr 28 '15 at 18:02
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Well, not quite. The dictionary definitions of plurality suggest that it only refers to multiple things, which loses the binary meaning the OP wanted. Furthermore, adding a definition and/or examples of usage with corresponding references would add credibility to your answers (in the future). Welcome to the ELU, btw :-) – Lucky Apr 28 '15 at 16:16
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Actually, when I read this question plurality was the first word that came to my mind as well, so I understand your line of thought. This is another reason why adding references is useful to the answerer as well as the others. But I do cheer your enthusiasm to participate :-) – Lucky Apr 28 '15 at 16:27