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In editing a document, I changed a word from a singular form to a plural one, and I want to leave a comment explaining what I did. The comment I wanted to write went something like this: "changed the ??? of this word for consistency".

My first guesses were "plurality" or "multiplicity", but after reviewing the definitions of those, I'm don't think that's quite right.

Any suggestions?

RegDwigнt
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Ben Collins
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1 Answers1

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It's called the grammatical number of the noun:

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").[1]

But you can use number agreement if you're specifically comparing one word's grammatical number to another's.

Also, plurality is in fact an accepted word for this:

In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity (i.e., grammatical number) representing a value of "other-than-one".

Take your choice.

Daniel
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  • I went with 'grammatical number'. Thanks (and thanks to RegDwight AAA). – Ben Collins Jul 19 '12 at 16:17
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    OED's first definition of plurality is The state of being plural; the fact or condition of denoting, comprising, or consisting of more than one, which isn't "linguistics-specific". Personally I think in a linguistics/grammar context (which is what we have here on ELU), plurality would normally be understood to mean the attribute which can have either of the values singular* or plural*. – FumbleFingers Jul 19 '12 at 20:47