Why is "letter" not plural in "two letter words"?

Question

For me it's very strange as the equivalent in French would be plural but my English friend finds it totally normal.

In French, you would say "mots de deux lettres" right? The equivalent English structure is "words of two letters," where the plural is indeed used. But "two-letter words" (I think it is best to write it with a hyphen) uses a construction which has no exact equivalent in French (just as the French "soupe à l'oignon" construction has no exact equivalent in English). — sumelic, Mar 28 '17 at 16:51
How that is written in French is irrelevant. I bet in German one would write that as a single word, but that doesn't mean you have to concatenate words in English. — Dmitry Grigoryev, Mar 29 '17 at 11:28
@DmitryGrigoryev In my understanding the point is not about how it's written in French, rather it's the fact that - unlike words of two letters, which does have an exact French equivalent and both use the plural - the expression two-letter words has no exact equivalent in French, and such English expression needs the singular; same as two-year old. Regardless, I also have the feeling that the hyphen is kind of key here. — SantiBailors, Mar 29 '17 at 11:44
In french you would use a similar adjective form : un mot doublement lettré if you really want something equivalent, which is not plural either. I agree nobody use such constructs in french. — JB., Mar 30 '17 at 08:11
@SantiBailors: yes, the hyphen is key. But that should be two-year-old. A two-year-old child is two years old. (Many high-ranking journalists don't get this.) — TonyK, Mar 30 '17 at 17:20
I think hyphenating all three words only works if they are being used to modify a noun ("two-year-old child" vs. "a two-year old") or an inanimate object. As a descriptive noun, I always see the second hyphen left off with "old" in place of the missing "child". This appears to be a regular if non-standard transformation when discussing a person. You wouldn't use it for a building. — Ber, Mar 30 '17 at 21:42

Araucaria - Not here any more. · Accepted Answer · 2017-03-28T15:58:06.440

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Measure phrases are special noun phrases that we use to explain how long or big or heavy or expensive something is:

The programme was ten minutes.
The walk was five miles.
The meal was twenty pounds.
The word is only three letters

These measure phrases all include a number, like one or seven and a noun afterwards. In the examples above these measure phrases are Complements of the verb. You will notice that the nouns are all in the plural, as we expect.

We can also use measure phrases like these to modify nouns:

a ten minute programme.
a five mile walk.
a twenty pound note.
a three letter word.

Here, these measure phrases are modifying the nouns programme, walk and note. They are in the same position that we find adjectives in. When we use measure phrases in this way, the noun in the measure phrase is not plural. We see no S on the ends of the words in the measure phrases.

Really this is not very surprising. Why? Well, when we use a noun to modify another noun, we don't usually use plurals (there are exceptions of course). So we usually say:

a book collector
an anteater
a cherry tart

We don't say:

*a books collector
*an ants eater
*a cherries tart

edited Mar 28 '17 at 15:58

answered Mar 28 '17 at 15:06

Araucaria - Not here any more.

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You don't think that "three-letter" should be a compound rather than a syntactic construction? – BillJ Mar 28 '17 at 16:04
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@BillJ I've never really considered 'compound adjectives' based on measure phrases as compound adjectives. I was very surprised today to find that H&P do. I've always regarded them as nominals in attributive function. I don't think there's much (if any) difference between a three mile walk and a twenty dollar bill and a three letter word ... Maybe there is - but I can't see it. Is there any difference in their syntactic properties? – Araucaria - Not here any more. Mar 28 '17 at 16:08
@BillJ H&P call them compound adjective constructions ... If you felt like editing my post to make it CGEL compliant, please do!!!! I'm not up with H&P on compounds. And I'll defer to your better judgement here ... Also, I don't understand why the only criteria mentioned by H&P for these being c-adj as opposed to nominals is that they don't inflect. After all other nominals don't inflect either! "Book" in "book collector", for example! (Scratches head. Shrugs ...) – Araucaria - Not here any more. Mar 28 '17 at 16:14
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I think "three-letter" is a noun-centred compound noun (det+noun) as attributive modifier of "word" in your example. I know dictionaries are unreliable, but they all give "four-letter" as a single noun in "four-letter word". The fact that it is hyphenated is an indication that "four-letter" is single lexeme, not a syntactic construction of modifier + noun (see CGEL p1644) – BillJ Mar 28 '17 at 16:55
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@BillJ We can coordinate the numerals there: "Two, three and four letter words". However, I can see two-letter as a compound noun - but not as a compound adjective, which is what I think H&P would say it was. I'm with you on that. – Araucaria - Not here any more. Mar 28 '17 at 19:08
@Araucaria: parts of words can be (or at least can appear to be) coordinated (e.g. "super- and subordinate structures"), which I believe some see as evidence against the idea of a strict division between a lexical level and higher level. I share your confusion about why "two letter," whether thought of as a phrase or as a compound, would be lexically classified by H&P as an adjective rather than as a noun. – sumelic Mar 28 '17 at 20:54
@sumelic If the main component of a compound word is a noun, then the word can only be a noun. There is nothing adjectival about "three-letter" in "three-letter word". "Three-letter" is a noun-centred compound noun modifying "word". H&P would say the same thing. – BillJ Mar 29 '17 at 18:37
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@BillJ That's why I'd have thought, but not so it seems - unfortunately. See CamGEL p.470 and also more specifically p.1660 4.3.3 "Other forms" : One productive type that merits mention involves measure expressions with a singular noun base: a three-inch nail, a five-mile walk, a two-year moratorium. These do not qualify as nominals, which have plural forms of the noun: The nail is three inches long; We walked five miles; and so on. These compound adjectives can [...]" Btw, notice that five miles isn't actually a nominal there - it is an NP!! – Araucaria - Not here any more. Mar 29 '17 at 18:46
Ah, got it! They are compound adjectives because the main noun component can't be pluralised. Unlike, for example the compound nouns "city-dweller(s)" or "shirt-sleeve(s)", you can't say "a three-inches nail", or "a three-letters word". Well spotted A. (I still take "three-letter" as a hyphenated compound, though, not a syntactic construction) – BillJ Mar 29 '17 at 19:07
@BillJ That argument of theirs won't go through though! (It seems to me) In general nominal modifiers of nouns don't take plural inflections (and most of the exceptional cases are actually probably disguised genitive forms as opposed to normal plurals). We don't see "books collectors" or "cherries tarts"!!! That argument's a no-go. Why should we make an exception here? (Also the stress facts don't tally.* 'Three letter 'word* is what we'd expect from three stressed word in a row - the middle one would become less prominent). The only good point is about not being able ... – Araucaria - Not here any more. Mar 29 '17 at 19:14
But aren't we talking specifically about compounds here, where different considerations apply – BillJ Mar 29 '17 at 19:15
@BillJ But why are the considerations different? If modifying nominals don't have plural inflections (in general), why should we expect compound nominals to have plural inflections? Isn't that the point of a compound - that the two words behave like a single word would? (scratches head - still confused ....) – Araucaria - Not here any more. Mar 29 '17 at 19:18
Seems reasonable, but I have to point out that those example phrases at the top all sound odd. Probably BrE vs AmE. The program was ten minutes long, the walk was five miles long, the meal cost twenty pounds, the word is only three letters long. – DCShannon Mar 29 '17 at 19:49
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Hi folks, just FYI this answer has been automatically flagged for having a bunch of comments. Can we make sure that the salient points here have been incorporated into the answer and possibly move this into a chat room? I'm reluctant to trim the conversation just yet because I think it's valuable, but I would like to whittle it down eventually. – ColleenV Mar 29 '17 at 20:26
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I've submitted an edit hyphenating the second group, because I was taught that when a multi-word phrase is used as an adjective to modify a noun following it, the phrase is hyphenated, like "ten-minute programme" – Monty Harder Mar 29 '17 at 22:15
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@MontyHarder Thanks for the edit suggestion. I'm not against hyphenating such combinations. But I don't like teaching them (and don't like, therefore, using them here). The reason is just that the hyphenation of such modifiers is not consistent by convention, is not used by many writers, and generally makes things difficult for learners. Given a (debatably mandatory) hyphen or an S, the S issue is fundamentally important, and the hyphen one waivable. (My aesthetic preferenc is for the hyphen - but that aesthetics for you! :-)) – Araucaria - Not here any more. Mar 29 '17 at 22:42
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I (non-native speaker, admittedly) have an odd feeling with "Two, three and four letter words"; immediate parsing makes me think it's two, three or four words, with letters. Only when this doesn't make much sense I realize that the numbers belong to "letter". Part of that is exactly the question's issue: letter is singular, words is plural, so the numbers indicating a plurality must surely refer to the plural noun. I'd hyphenate for clarity: "Two-, three- and four-letter words". But then as a German my bias is a bit off concerning word chains. – Peter - Reinstate Monica Mar 30 '17 at 13:57
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"Really this is not very surprising." well... for an English speaker. :) In French we wouldn't say "a book collector" but "a collector of books" ("un collectionneur de livres"), so it doesn't make "two letter words" any less strange to us. Thanks for your thorough explanation though! – Romanito Mar 30 '17 at 15:59
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@Romanito Actually, that's a perfectly grammaticl and idiomatic way of saying it in English too - though much less common. I have often described myself as "a collector of books" - and we use the plural books there too. There, the word books is in a preposition phrase, instead of occurring before the noun. It's works differently there. It's complicated! :-) – Araucaria - Not here any more. Mar 30 '17 at 20:30
@PeterA.Schneider A lot of native speakers do indeed use hyphenation there - but not consistently. Others don't though. Here's a page from the Scrabble website, for example. Aesthetically, I agree with you ... – Araucaria - Not here any more. Mar 30 '17 at 20:42
I wanted to learn the answer to the question that came up in the comments, so I made a new post on ELU: Syntax of “two-letter word,” “five-mile run,” “three-hour play”? – sumelic Apr 08 '17 at 23:57

score 21 · Answer 2 · edited Mar 29 '17 at 01:36

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You might mean 'two-letter words'.
Be aware that there's a real hyphen between 'two' and 'letter', with which we don't use plural from of the latter word because such a hyphened phrase is used as an adjective, not a noun. For example:

I went on a trip of four days after my three-day work was done.
A boy of five years and another six-year-old girl.

edited Mar 29 '17 at 01:36

answered Mar 28 '17 at 14:13

iBug

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From my observation US writers usually omit the hyphen – im_chc Mar 28 '17 at 16:18
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@im_chc : I see that as well, but I'm afraid it's from ignorance, not because of a grammatical standard. I dislike that practice very much. I also very rarely see the correct use of the hyphen in numbers, such as "one thousand four hundred thirty-eight" – MPW Mar 28 '17 at 19:38
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"A boy of five years old and....?" Really? I would expect "A boy of five years and...." – Adam Mar 28 '17 at 20:06
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@iBug I went ahead and incorporated Adam's suggestion into your answer. The example was ungrammatical with old. However, it is your answer, so please feel free to edit it as you see fit (including rolling back the change if you disagree). – Mar 29 '17 at 01:37
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@snailplane A bit of joke. I'm feeling that the people who know the grammar of a language very well is rarely a native speaker as that language. As a Chinese I'm often confused about how deep western learners study Chinese and I also see a lot of western people complaining about Asian English learners studying too deep to some extent. – iBug Mar 29 '17 at 11:04
Going off topic now (or should that read "off-topic") but I was taught at school that "five years old" is the correct phrase, while "five years" is wrong. Was my teacher mistaken, or has the language changed since the 20th century? – Mr Lister Mar 29 '17 at 18:34
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@MrLister The boy is five years old, but he is of five years. – DCShannon Mar 29 '17 at 19:51
@DCShannon Ah, context. – Mr Lister Mar 29 '17 at 19:52
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Really, the hyphen doesn't matter to this question because it is spoken the same way with or without the hyphen. I.e. the presence or absence of a hyphen (written) doesn't change the underlying grammar (spoken). – CJ Dennis Mar 31 '17 at 00:36

score 6 · Answer 3 · edited Mar 29 '17 at 00:56

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The measure phrases, such as "two-letter", act as adjectives. We do not pluralize adjectives in English.

Any accurate translation is an equivalent: any phrase that gets across the same meaning, or as close to that meaning as possible. We should never primarily try for a word-for-word translation as our primary goal.

I don't have the "reputation" to comment on others' posts, but let's improve on sentences such as "The meal was 20 pounds." No, the meal cost 20 pounds. (More precise, easily translated, and enjoyable to read.)

edited Mar 29 '17 at 00:56

Araucaria - Not here any more.

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answered Mar 28 '17 at 18:32

R Wm

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Also removes ambiguity. "The meal was 20 pounds" could be talking about how much it weighed (that's a heavy meal!) – Adeptus Mar 29 '17 at 01:51
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@Adeptus ... or about eating 20 £; good point. – SantiBailors Mar 29 '17 at 11:49
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@Adeptus Someone eat a meal weighing 20 lb? I think abbreviations are better here as "lb" and "£" provide no ambiguity but "pound" does. – iBug Mar 29 '17 at 14:14

score 3 · Answer 4 · edited Mar 30 '17 at 17:02

For a combination of 2 reasons:

English has a Germanic grammar, and in Germanic languages, "twoletterword" is one word – a noun! It does not matter that English writes it in 3 words (and as a result, calls it a noun phrase, not a noun) – Germanic languages are older than writing. As far as I know, all other Germanic languages would write it as "twoletterword", which may better represent how they work.
Inflecting a word's constituents is undefined in English. You can only inflect the word as a whole, which is indistinguishable from inflecting the last constituent word (because Germanic compound words read like domain names – most significant part last, which is also where the inflection is).

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Mar 28 '17 at 20:48

A compound noun combines multiple nouns to make a new noun, and treats the first noun as an adjective to describe the second noun. Two letters and word are combining to make a new noun. A car salesman is another example. The true noun here is salesman. The word car is there to tell us what kind of salesman they are, so it's being used like an adjective and therefore should not be pluralized like you might a noun. Many compound nouns have no spaces between their constituent nouns, such as keyboard, dishwasher and bathroom. Those examples demonstrate the sheer power of compound nouns--the ability to just take a singular noun and tack it on to another to make a new word. Awesome. And imagine how funny it would sound if you had to add s/es to the first of the two nouns (keysboard, disheswasher, bathsroom...).

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Mar 30 '17 at 20:53

The issue is an understanding of the implicit but unspoken content: a 'letter' means an "instance of the letter object' a 'word' means a collection of letter objects

Thus a "two letter word" means two instances of the letter object combined in a word while a word of 20 letters is a collection of size 20 containing letter objects

The English language recognises that the two usages describe different things and therefore have different structures

Why is "letter" not plural in "two letter words"?

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