a + plural?

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alexbod - 18 Dec 2003 08:19 GMT

"Victory has a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan". Could anyone tell
me why "hundreds fathers" is accompanied with "a" in this wonderful phrase?

Regards,
Alexander Bodnarchuk

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CyberCypher - 18 Dec 2003 08:27 GMT

"alexbod" <alexbod@foss.kharkov.ua> wrote on 18 Dec 2003:

> "Victory has a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan". Could
> anyone tell me why "hundreds fathers" is accompanied with "a" in
> this wonderful phrase?

If you look at it again, you will see that it is "a hundred fathers",
which is prefectly correct English, and not *"a hundreds fathers",
which is naught but a series of three English words ungrammatically
strung together.

It could have been "one hundred fathers" or "hundreds of fathers", but
never *"hundreds fathers" nor *"a hundreds fathers".

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Franke: EFL teacher & medical editor.

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Django Cat - 18 Dec 2003 08:44 GMT

> "Victory has a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan". Could anyone
> tell
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
> Regards,
> Alexander Bodnarchuk

Alex, a more useful answer to your question is that the indefinate article
'a' is qualifying the number 'hundred' - although there are 100 fathers,
there's only one number.

Merry Christmas
DC Cat

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CyberCypher - 18 Dec 2003 09:03 GMT

Django Cat <nospam@absolutelynospam.com> wrote on 18 Dec 2003:

>> "Victory has a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan". Could
>> anyone tell me why "hundreds fathers" is accompanied
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
> article 'a' is qualifying the number 'hundred' - although there
> are 100 fathers, there's only one number.

Wouldn't it be even clearer and more useful to say that the
indefinite article "a" is always used with a singular noun and that
it indicates "one"? Then how do you explain the singular indefinite
article being used with the plural noun "fathers" if you want to call
"hundred" a "number" instead of a "noun" or a "quantifier", which is
also a noun. Because, of course, "a hundred" is an adjective phrase
all by itself that can also be used as a noun phrase, as in "A
hundred died on that fateful day".

W3NID:

Main Entry: 2hundred
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English, from hundred, n.

: being 100 in number *a hundred years* usually preceded by a, an,
or a numeral (as one, four)

And what is useful about providing unclear information? Better that
Alex should look up the word "hundred" all by himself in a decent
English dictionary, of which there are many online.

Main Entry: quantifier
Function: noun
Inflected Form: -s

1 : a word (as a numeral) expressive of quantity *two, thirty, many,
and much are quantifiers*
2 : a prefix that binds the variables in a logical formula by
specifying their quantity see EXISTENTIAL OPERATOR, UNIVERSAL
QUANTIFIER

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Franke: EFL teacher & medical editor.

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Django Cat - 18 Dec 2003 18:07 GMT

> Django Cat <nospam@absolutelynospam.com> wrote on 18 Dec 2003:
>
[quoted text clipped - 34 lines]
> 2 : a prefix that binds the variables in a logical formula by specifying
> their quantity see EXISTENTIAL OPERATOR, UNIVERSAL QUANTIFIER

Quote
Wouldn't it be even clearer and more useful to say that the indefinite

> article "a" is always used with a singular noun and that it indicates
> "one"?

It's pretty obvious from the title of the posting that Alex knows this and
wants to know why what appears to him to be a plural phrase is being used
with 'a' which he's been taught goes with singular objects.

Quote
"Victory has a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan". Could

>>> anyone tell me why "hundreds fathers" is accompanied
>>> with "a" in this wonderful phrase?

It's also surely grindindly clear from the context of Alex's question, that
the 's' at the end of the second "hundred" is a typo - something none of us
here are immune to. BTW I called 'hundred' a number because that's what it
is - yes it's a noun, but so is "banana"; it's a quantifier but so is
"some". Neither of these things are numbers. I wasn't using the word
'number' as an attempt at simplified grammatical metalanguage if that's
what you're suggesting.

I just think it's more helpful to answer L2 learners' very straightforward
queries straightforwardly rather than huffing and puffing about 'a series
of three English words ungrammatically strung together.'

But there is something curious going on here, isn't there? I think all the
'quantifier' stuff may be a red herring, (so 'hundred' is a quantifier and
a noun - what about 'fifty'?) but why is it that the *numbers* 'hundred',
'thousand' and 'dozen' (and probably some others) can be used with
articles:-

"Anne of a Thousand Days"
"The hundred years war"
"A dozen eggs"

while, 'two', 'fifty', '999,999' can't be. I expect the answer 'because
that's how it is' any day now.

Thanks for the dictionary quotation.

Seasonal felicitude
DC

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alexbod - 18 Dec 2003 19:17 GMT

Thank you, CyberCypher and Django Cat, for your thorough explanations. It
was really my fault to not address LDCE first:

=============
hundred number

1 100: a hundred years | two hundred miles
=============

I could not catch why 'a' is perfect correct from the first reply of
CyberCypher. But the further discussion and the citation from W3NID shed the
light on the issue. It's all clear to me now.

Thank you again.

Regards,
Alexander Bodnarchuk

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Wes Groleau - 19 Dec 2003 02:21 GMT

> But there is something curious going on here, isn't there? I think all
> the 'quantifier' stuff may be a red herring, (so 'hundred' is a
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
> while, 'two', 'fifty', '999,999' can't be. I expect the answer 'because
> that's how it is' any day now.

Because that's how it is. :-)

Consider this explanation: When followed by a word
that represents a number, e.g., the three above,
'a' is effectively the same as 'one.' So any number
that can be preceded by 'one' can be preceded by
'a' instead.

In many Indo-european languages 'one' IS the indefinite
article.

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Wes Groleau
----
The man who reads nothing at all is better educated
than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.
-- Thomas Jefferson

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CyberCypher - 19 Dec 2003 03:15 GMT

Django Cat <nospam@absolutelynospam.com> wrote on 19 Dec 2003:

>> Django Cat <nospam@absolutelynospam.com> wrote on 18 Dec 2003:
>>
[quoted text clipped - 49 lines]
> phrase is being used with 'a' which he's been taught goes with
> singular objects.

Yes, and this indicates that he knows more grammar and its technical
terms than most native speakers of English. Which is also true here
in Far East Asia.

> Quote
> "Victory has a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan". Could
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
> question, that the 's' at the end of the second "hundred" is a
> typo - something none of us here are immune to.

No, it's not grindingly clear. In many other languages, adjectives
agree in both gender and number with the nouns they modify. It could
just as easily have been a reading error as a typo.

> BTW I called
> 'hundred' a number because that's what it is - yes it's a noun,
> but so is "banana"; it's a quantifier but so is "some". Neither
> of these things are numbers. I wasn't using the word 'number' as
> an attempt at simplified grammatical metalanguage if that's what
> you're suggesting.

Yes, that is what I was suggesting. EFL students usually know all the
grammar terms, unlike native anglophones, so it's not useless to
explain things in technical terms. Sometimes students ask me
technical questions that I have to check my grammar book before
answering. I loved the study of syntax in my linguistics program, but
who wants to remember all these technical terms that are normally
useless when discussing real English with real people who are not
linguists or grammarians? EFL students, because their teachers make
them learn all that essentially-useless-for-producing-English
metalanguage.

> I just think it's more helpful to answer L2 learners' very
> straightforward queries straightforwardly rather than huffing and
> puffing about 'a series of three English words ungrammatically
> strung together.'

Actually, I was sitting down and not at all winded when I wrote that.

> But there is something curious going on here, isn't there? I
> think all the 'quantifier' stuff may be a red herring, (so
> 'hundred' is a quantifier and a noun - what about 'fifty'?) but
> why is it that the *numbers* 'hundred', 'thousand' and 'dozen'
> (and probably some others) can be used with articles:-

It is, of course, possible to use the definite article with any
number when it is being used a head noun, as in "The fifty who shared
first prize in today's lottery will each receive 1 million dollars".
The numbers that take "a" sometimes, "hundred", "thousand",
"million", "billion", "trillion", "dozen", etc, all seem to be
collective nouns (and numbers and quantifiers) that are considered
singular while the rest seem to be considered plural. Plural nouns
can take "the" but not "a" or "one", the numerical equivalent of "a".
I don't know if this is an adequate or correct answer, but it seems
plausible at first utterance.

> "Anne of a Thousand Days"
> "The hundred years war"
> "A dozen eggs"
>
> while, 'two', 'fifty', '999,999' can't be. I expect the answer
> 'because that's how it is' any day now.

That is sometimes the only answer possible, but I don't think it's
helpful in this case. There are reasons.

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Wes Groleau - 20 Dec 2003 03:32 GMT

> The numbers that take "a" sometimes, "hundred", "thousand",
> "million", "billion", "trillion", "dozen", etc, all seem to be
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
> I don't know if this is an adequate or correct answer, but it seems
> plausible at first utterance.

Hmmm. I'm inclined to agree. At first, I thought:

Well, I _could_ get away with saying, 'Divide
them into four groups of fifty. Put a fifty over
here, another fifty over there, one fifty by the hill,
and the last fifty on the bridge.'

But when I actually typed it, I realized that
sentence would almost certainly NOT have the
word 'a' in it.

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Wes Groleau
-----------
Curmudgeon's Complaints on Courtesy:
http://www.onlinenetiquette.com/courtesy1.html
(Not necessarily my opinion, but worth reading)

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CyberCypher - 20 Dec 2003 05:54 GMT

Wes Groleau <groleau@freeshell.org> wrote on 20 Dec 2003:

>> The numbers that take "a" sometimes, "hundred", "thousand",
>> "million", "billion", "trillion", "dozen", etc, all seem to be
[quoted text clipped - 14 lines]
> sentence would almost certainly NOT have the
> word 'a' in it.

If you are talking about 50 individual items, then you're right, there
wouldn't be an "a" in front of any of them, but if you're talking about
the Arabic numeral "50", there could be:

50
50
50
50

On four of the lines above, I've put a "50". On the first line, there's
a 50 in column 1. On the second line, there's a 50 in column 11. On the
third line, there's a 50 in column 21. And on the fourth line, there's
a 50 in column 31.

But in this case, the "50" refers to a singular entity.

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Discussion Groups / ESL Teaching / December 2003

a + plural?