Inflecting for number in decimals

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Inflecting for number in decimals

Post by installer_swan »

Just the other day, I heard a friend's GPS say "in point one miles ...". This somehow sounded grammatically wrong to me. I thought about it and figured that I am happy with "0.3 miles" in analogy with "three tenths of a mile", but 0.1 would be "one/a tenth of a mile" and hence the quatifier should be in the singular. Most other languages I speak don't mark quantifiers for number at all, so I'm wondering what you guys do in this usage usually? And/or anything interesting that other languages/dialectical variants do.
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Re: Inflecting for number in decimals

Post by Imralu »

I would probably say "point one of a mile", or "zero point one miles" (actually, I'd say 200 metres or whatever it works out to be in the world outside the USA). "Point one mile" sounds completely wrong. It sounds like you mean one mile. For me, plural is really just a 'non-one' inflection. I have two wives, zero dogs and minus one dollars.
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Re: Inflecting for number in decimals

Post by Ulrike Meinhof »

installer_swan wrote:Just the other day, I heard a friend's GPS say "in point one miles ...". This somehow sounded grammatically wrong to me. I thought about it and figured that I am happy with "0.3 miles" in analogy with "three tenths of a mile", but 0.1 would be "one/a tenth of a mile" and hence the quatifier should be in the singular.
I think the real reason that "point one miles" sounds wrong but "point three miles" sounds right is that you're used to "one" being followed by a singular and "three" by a plural.
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Re: Inflecting for number in decimals

Post by Imralu »

Ulrike Meinhof wrote:I think the real reason that "point one miles" sounds wrong but "point three miles" sounds right is that you're used to "one" being followed by a singular and "three" by a plural.
It doesn't sound wrong to me ... well, it needs the "zero" first ("point one miles" is weird, but "zero point one miles" is fine), but it doesn't sound wrong to me because it's not after "one". It's after a number that contains /wʌn/, but 0.1 ≠ 1

Similarly "Friends is" sounds completely wrong, but it's fine if it's preceded by "one of my". "One of my friends are" sounds wrong. I'm not just listening to /frendz/ and making a decision based on that, it's the whole phrase.

I'm sure this kind of thing results in a lot of funniness. I have heard one of my friends say "One of my friends' mum's cook ..." and he wasn't talking about one of the two mothers of his one friend, but the one mother of one of his many friends.
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Re: Inflecting for number in decimals

Post by Chuma »

Ulrike Meinhof wrote:I think the real reason that "point one miles" sounds wrong but "point three miles" sounds right is that you're used to "one" being followed by a singular and "three" by a plural.
I agree.

I think I would also use plural for anything that isn't one, basically.

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Re: Inflecting for number in decimals

Post by Miekko »

is -'s and -s' audibly distinguishable in your variety of English?
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Re: Inflecting for number in decimals

Post by Gulliver »

"Point one miles" sounds correct to me. However, if someone said "point one mile" to me, I don't think it would ding as being wrong immediately unless I was looking out for such things.

French nouns after zéro [0] are also singular, just as they are after un and une [1]. French also does not mark plurality on names, which is interesting but not particularly relevant (Harry Potter vivait avec les Dursley but Harry Potter lived with the Durlseys).

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Re: Inflecting for number in decimals

Post by Torco »

In spanish we don't usuallly go for decimals, most frequently we'll use fractions, so it's more 'un tercio de milla' o 'medio kilómetro' o 'metro y medio' or something. however, these fractions are relative clauses, maybe? the structure is thusly:

Code: Select all

dos cuartos de kilómetro 
2  /  4   of a     kilometer
where cuartos, fourths is a plural, and the kilometer is a singular.

it works thus with most fractions, I think.

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Re: Inflecting for number in decimals

Post by installer_swan »

Miekko wrote:is -'s and -s' audibly distinguishable in your variety of English?
I don't think so, though in my idiolect the -s' tends to stress the preceding vowel, and I have occasionally heard other people do this.

Ulrike Meinhof wrote:I think the real reason that "point one miles" sounds wrong but "point three miles" sounds right is that you're used to "one" being followed by a singular and "three" by a plural.
I suppose that's partially it, but as Imralu points out it's not just that. And the problem doesn't go away even if you add the "zero" as in "zero point one miles" (still feels wrong).
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Re: Inflecting for number in decimals

Post by spats »

Miekko wrote:is -'s and -s' audibly distinguishable in your variety of English?
By intonation in some cases, because there tends to be a slight rising-falling over each noun phrase, but in no other way I can detect. It's actually a really interesting thing, because I'm sure lots of languages use prosodic cues as a sort of faux agreement mechanism even if traditional agreement doesn't show up in the morphology.

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Re: Inflecting for number in decimals

Post by tezcatlip0ca »

I would say "point one mile", "point three miles", "zero point one miles", "a hundred and one miles", "zero miles", but yeah, this is one of the pitfalls of grammar, since there is really no satisfactory way to say it, just like there is no single satisfactory way to refer to the '00s and '10s. (Sorry for begging the question, but this is the ZBB.)
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Re: Inflecting for number in decimals

Post by Pinetree »

Aiďos wrote: just like there is no single satisfactory way to refer to the '00s and '10s. (Sorry for begging the question, but this is the ZBB.)
for the '00s, i generally say either the 'naughts' (if I'm talking about the decade in general) or the 'aughts' (If i'm talking about specific dates (like 2007 was Aught Seven, Or Twenty Aught Seven))

EDIT: I realize this is a lot more british than my fellow canadians. Huh.

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Re: Inflecting for number in decimals

Post by Ser »

Torco wrote:In spanish we don't usuallly go for decimals
We don't?

Well, if it's people talking about their cars' mileage, sure. But what would you expect to be said in the context of a math problem, or as in the OP's context, a GPS?

I think the most common way to read such decimals is with a plural: 0.1 km cero punto uno kilómetros. Using the English construction installer_swan and others use, cero punto uno kilómetro, sounds very weird to me, and perhaps I've never heard it.
Last edited by Ser on Tue May 15, 2012 12:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Inflecting for number in decimals

Post by hwhatting »

In German, for 0,n (we use a decimal comma instead of a decimal point) with n not 1, its always the plural (0,3 s. = null komma drei Sekunden.)
With 0,1 there is, at least for me, a difference whether I use the inflected form null komma eine Sekunde (= sg.), or the uninflected numeral null komma eins Sekunden (= pl.). I'd be interested to know whether the other German speakers on the board have the same differentiation?

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Re: Inflecting for number in decimals

Post by Travis B. »

I myself am used to point one miles not *point one mile, which sounds wrong to me. However, from asking a couple of my coworkers about this, one of them basically gave the answer I gave (without my telling them a "right" answer), and the other said that they might automatically say point one mile (but never *point two one mile) but if they caught themselves or were thinking about it while speaking they would probably correct themselves to point one miles.
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Re: Inflecting for number in decimals

Post by tezcatlip0ca »

Does anyone else say decimals in groups of two?

3.168 = three point one sixty-eight
5.2016 = five point twenty sixteen
1.08467 = one point zero eighty-four sixty-seven
6.154903 = six point fifteen forty-nine oh-three
11.003 = eleven point double-oh three
0.000079 = seventy-nine millionths (I only do that for very small decimals with up to three significant figures)

And pi is:
three point one four one five nine two sixty-five thirty-five eighty-nine seventy-nine thirty-two thirty-eight forty-six two sixty-four three thirty-eight thirty-two seventy-nine five zero two eighty-eight four one nine seventy-one six nine three ninety-nine thirty-seven five hundred and ten; five eighty-two zero ninety-seven four nine four four etcetera. (Yes, I know 60 decimals of pi.)
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Re: Inflecting for number in decimals

Post by hwhatting »

Aiďos wrote:Does anyone else say decimals in groups of two?
That can be frequently observed in German speakers, but, as far as I'm aware, only in case of numbers with two digits after the decimal comma (1,48 = eins komma achtundvierzig, but 1,4853 = eins komma vier acht fünf drei). Saying those two digits as a group was a habit several of our maths teachers tried to break us of in school, mostly in vain.

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Re: Inflecting for number in decimals

Post by Ser »

Aiďos wrote:Does anyone else say decimals in groups of two?

3.168 = three point one sixty-eight
5.2016 = five point twenty sixteen
1.08467 = one point zero eighty-four sixty-seven
6.154903 = six point fifteen forty-nine oh-three
11.003 = eleven point double-oh three
0.000079 = seventy-nine millionths (I only do that for very small decimals with up to three significant figures)
Sure, all the time. In fact, this is what I've heard the most in Spanish, not digit by digit. Even groups of three at times. Not groups of four and above though. Tres punto ciento sesenta y ocho, cinco punto veinte dieciséis. Pi is usually called tres punto catorce or tres punto catorce dieciséis.

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Re: Inflecting for number in decimals

Post by Cedh »

hwhatting wrote:In German, for 0,n (we use a decimal comma instead of a decimal point) with n not 1, its always the plural (0,3 s. = null komma drei Sekunden.)
With 0,1 there is, at least for me, a difference whether I use the inflected form null komma eine Sekunde (= sg.), or the uninflected numeral null komma eins Sekunden (= pl.). I'd be interested to know whether the other German speakers on the board have the same differentiation?
Yes, I have this differentiation too. I'm much more likely to use the second construction though (null komma eins Sekunden).

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Re: Inflecting for number in decimals

Post by installer_swan »

Aiďos wrote:Does anyone else say decimals in groups of two?

3.168 = three point one sixty-eight
5.2016 = five point twenty sixteen
...
I have never heard this usage in English. It is very common for a lot of speakers of Indian English to read out telephone numbers or street addresses as a string of two-digit or three-digit numbers, but I haven't heard it used for decimals.
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Re: Inflecting for number in decimals

Post by 2+3 clusivity »

I also chunk numbers for tele and library call numbers in 2s.

I suppose 0.1 miles and 0.3 miles both sound odd to me. If you think about it, it's really only .1 or .3 of a single mile.
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Re: Inflecting for number in decimals

Post by clawgrip »

2+3 clusivity wrote:I also chunk numbers for tele and library call numbers in 2s.

I suppose 0.1 miles and 0.3 miles both sound odd to me. If you think about it, it's really only .1 or .3 of a single mile.
It's pretty established in English that plural is used for any number that is not one.

Consider the following sentences:
*There were 20 renewals, 2 new sign-ups, and 0 cancellation.
*Hey, there is no cup left in the cup dispenser!

We have to pluralize 'cancellation' and 'cup' because, despite being <2, they are not referring specifically to a single item. The same goes for decimals, which are also not referring to a single item.

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Re: Inflecting for number in decimals

Post by installer_swan »

clawgrip wrote:It's pretty established in English that plural is used for any number that is not one.

Consider the following sentences:
*There were 20 renewals, 2 new sign-ups, and 0 cancellation.
*Hey, there is no cup left in the cup dispenser!

We have to pluralize 'cancellation' and 'cup' because, despite being <2, they are not referring specifically to a single item. The same goes for decimals, which are also not referring to a single item.
I'm not sure I find this very convincing. "0" is a special case and it is usually treated as a plural number in English. (Even with 0, though, there is the synonym "no" which works, cf. "There was no cancelation" is fine but "*There was 0 cancellation" isn't) . I'm not so sure about fractions less than one. Consider:

Code: Select all

*I ate half pizzas
I ate half a pizza
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Re: Inflecting for number in decimals

Post by clawgrip »

installer_swan wrote:
clawgrip wrote:It's pretty established in English that plural is used for any number that is not one.

Consider the following sentences:
*There were 20 renewals, 2 new sign-ups, and 0 cancellation.
*Hey, there is no cup left in the cup dispenser!

We have to pluralize 'cancellation' and 'cup' because, despite being <2, they are not referring specifically to a single item. The same goes for decimals, which are also not referring to a single item.
I'm not sure I find this very convincing. "0" is a special case and it is usually treated as a plural number in English. (Even with 0, though, there is the synonym "no" which works, cf. "There was no cancelation" is fine but "*There was 0 cancellation" isn't) . I'm not so sure about fractions less than one. Consider:

Code: Select all

*I ate half pizzas
I ate half a pizza
Admittedly, the "no" question does complicate matters, since it can be plural or singular, and it doesn't relate to the original question. I will retract that for now.

I do think, however, that it is a mistake to try to use the pluralization rules for fractions to explain decimals, because, despite representing the same concept, they use entirely different grammatical patterns to do so. Fractions are phrased in a typical "X of Y" pattern, and X is pluralized whenever there is more than one, as you would expect: "one third of a pizza" (one, so singular), "two thirds of a pizza" (two, so plural). Decimals don't use "X of Y" so this pluralization doesn't apply.

You say that 0 is a special case, and this is, I think, the entire point of the original question involving 0.1 miles. Whenever we use 0, we have to use plural, and this includes decimals. Hence, 0.1 miles.

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Re: Inflecting for number in decimals

Post by Maulrus »

installer_swan wrote:
clawgrip wrote:It's pretty established in English that plural is used for any number that is not one.

Consider the following sentences:
*There were 20 renewals, 2 new sign-ups, and 0 cancellation.
*Hey, there is no cup left in the cup dispenser!

We have to pluralize 'cancellation' and 'cup' because, despite being <2, they are not referring specifically to a single item. The same goes for decimals, which are also not referring to a single item.
I'm not sure I find this very convincing. "0" is a special case and it is usually treated as a plural number in English. (Even with 0, though, there is the synonym "no" which works, cf. "There was no cancelation" is fine but "*There was 0 cancellation" isn't) . I'm not so sure about fractions less than one. Consider:

Code: Select all

*I ate half pizzas
I ate half a pizza
To me, at least, there were no cancellations and there was no cancellation mean pretty different things. While both are definitely grammatical, it's hard for me to imagine using the latter construction (cf. two sentences discussing magazine subscriptions: There were no subscriptions this summer and there was no subscription this summer - would you ever actually use the latter?). When referring to specific cancellations or specific subscriptions, it seems more natural to pluralize, and therefore I'd think clawgrip's point stands.

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