Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Of or relating to a linguistic form or construction that expresses a singular entity, often as opposed to a collective, such as rice-grain as opposed to rice.
- noun A singulative form or construction.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective grammar Of or pertaining to a grammatical form or construction that expresses the
individuation of a singlereferent from amass noun . - noun grammar A singulative form or construction.
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[French singulatif, from Latin singillātim, singulātim, one at a time, singly, from singulus, single; see single.]
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
From French singulatif, from Latin singillatim ("singly", "one by one"), from singulus ("single", "separate"), from simplex ("simple", "single"), from Proto-Indo-European *sem- (“one, together”).
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Examples
Sorry, no example sentences found.
qroqqa commented on the word singulative
I virtually never click on those little icons that go to what are claimed to be dictionaries; but I did for this and was disappointed in the results (predictably). The examples cited were from English, which has no true singulatives: snowflake and rice-grain are more just translations of the kind of thing that a singulative would be.
They occur commonly in Welsh and Arabic, where the mass form is morphologically simpler than the singulative, e.g. Welsh adar "birds", aderyn "bird", or Arabic ward "flowers", wardah "flower".
June 18, 2009
dimã©lion commented on the word singulative
this does look simply like a bastardisation of suffixes, at first glance. thank you! i'm glad you're furthering my education. no sarcasm intended.
June 18, 2009
rolig commented on the word singulative
This reminds me of Russian, where vegetables are often identified as grammatically singular mass nouns: морковь / morkov' means "carrots", while морковка / morkovka means "a carrot"; горох / gorokh "peas", but горошинка / goroshinka "a pea". In both these (and, I think, other) cases, the singulative is formed with a diminutive suffix.
June 18, 2009