In the sentence "She says she has no friends," the number of friends is zero, why is "friends" still plural?

Question

In the sentence

"She says she has no friends"

even though the number of friends is zero (less than two), why is "friends" still plural?

I learnt the rule that if a countable noun is two or more, it is written in the plural form. Therefore, the determiner "no" in this specific case really confuses me.

If a countable noun is more than one, it is written as a plural. — Michael Harvey, Mar 18 '24 at 11:14
Does this answer your question? Singular or plural nouns after "No" — Michael Harvey, Mar 18 '24 at 11:15
"She has no friend" is also correct and means essentially the same thing. It's just a less common phrase. — JimmyJames, Mar 18 '24 at 21:47
I'm not sure "determiner"(and its weaselly subdivision "quantifier") are useful concepts in the context of the role of *no* in the example utterance. Imho it's more helpful to just think of *no* as a simple *negator. Then it becomes much easier to compare the implications of She has friends* and She has a friend with or without the negator. I know that implies I somehow have to "explain away" how come the article *a friend* disappears in the negated singular *no friend*. But terminology isn't everything when it comes to natural language. — FumbleFingers, Mar 18 '24 at 22:35
@JimmyJames It's not a question of correctness, you can be grammatically correct and still sound extremely unnatural in conversation (everyone knows this who has studied a foreign language). — Hollis Williams, Mar 20 '24 at 09:44
The question whether there are languages which use the singular with "zero" (which would arguably be more logical) came up in the linguistics SE. The answer appears to be "French and Brazilian Portuguese". — Peter - Reinstate Monica, Mar 20 '24 at 20:58
In English, it's only possible with uncountable or generic nouns: "This is zero fun!" or "There is zero lemon in this lemonade!" — Peter - Reinstate Monica, Mar 20 '24 at 21:01
Broadly for the same reason that 'there is zero traffic' does but 'there are zero cars' does not work. — Robbie Goodwin, Mar 22 '24 at 22:11

FumbleFingers · Accepted Answer · 2024-03-19T03:28:46.347

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It's just that the normal expectation is she would have several friends.

We use the singular in contexts like He has no wife, or I have no car. We tend to use "do-support" or "got-support" anyway (He doesn't have a wife, I haven't got a car), so such assertions don't always sound completely natural regardless of the plurality.

Note that I have no son is likely to be bitter exaggeration from a father "disowning" his only son, whereas I have no sons is more likely if someone is lamenting the fact that he has no sons, whereas he would like to have several.

EDIT: (inspired by @DavidK's comment)
Suppose someone is standing in front of a "Beware of the dog!" sign. They'd probably say I see no dog or I don't see any dog in the singular, because they're only expecting to see one anyway.

But if they were on a country walk with a friend who'd just said There are hundreds of rabbits in these fields, they'd probably use the plural I see no rabbits or I don't see any rabbits.

It really is just contextual expectation that governs the plurality of "thing(s) whose existence is denied by the preceding word no".

edited Mar 19 '24 at 03:28

answered Mar 18 '24 at 11:16

FumbleFingers

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We use singular in the sentence "He has no wife" because the verb is supposed to agree with the subject, and the subject is "he", which is singular. THe number of the object doesn't matter. You wouldn't say, "He have two dogs" because "dogs" is plural. – Jay Mar 18 '24 at 12:30
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That makes no sense to me. He has* no wives* is perfectly natural English in contexts where some other people like him have multiple* wives*. – FumbleFingers Mar 18 '24 at 16:13
How about this: "He has no friend. Not even one." (In this case, the first sentence is in contrast to the expectation that a person would have at least one friend.) – David K Mar 18 '24 at 21:12
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"He has no friend. Not even one" would always be "marked", but it's certainly possible. Not really in normal conversation, but it's a perfectly good "literary, poetic" way of providing emphasis. – FumbleFingers Mar 18 '24 at 22:12
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@Jay The question is about the plural vs. singular noun, not the verb. In "He has no wife", the noun "wife" is singular because the expectation is that he would otherwise have one, singular, wife. – kaya3 Mar 18 '24 at 22:47
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-1 The OP seems to believe that nouns are only plural if the number is higher than 2. That's incorrect, so the answer isn't about expectations of the number of friends or wives someone has, it's that any noun not equal to one is plural. This applies to zero, fractions, decimals, negative numbers, etc. It's never correct to say "zero friend", regardless of the expectation – gotube Mar 19 '24 at 06:10
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@gotube: That's just speculation on your part. Since the OP is a non-native speaker, we shouldn't assume he's interested in the plurality of the (ridiculous and ungrammatical, imho) noun phrase [she has] zero friends** just because the word *zero* gets used a couple of times. It seems far more likely to me (and those upvoters who arrived here when it became a "Hot Network Post") that the core of the question is Why is it "no friends" and not "no friend"? All this guff about "zero* friends"* is just pointless distraction from the real question, imho. – FumbleFingers Mar 19 '24 at 11:30
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My gut feeling is that the use of zero noun to mean no noun is somewhat recent – but it is old enough that it is now completely unremarkably and of absolutely doubtless grammaticality to me. “I have zero interest in” (with quotes) gives me nearly half a million Google hits, and Ngrams show a sharp increase since ~1980. I don’t think shrugging off such constructions as ‘virtually ungrammatical’ is useful here, because they are very widely used. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Mar 19 '24 at 15:26
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(And of course there are contexts where it was always mandatory and not replaceable with ‘no’ – e.g., water freezes at zero degrees, not at *no degrees.) – Janus Bahs Jacquet Mar 19 '24 at 15:31
@JanusBahsJacquet: Well, I can't find any written instances of "have zero interest in" in Google Books before 1970, but this NGram certainly shows how it's shot to prominence in the last decade or two. Maybe I should get off my high horse about me not liking it, and disapproving of it being promoted to learners. But I still think that's a pointless distraction from the specific usage point (no friend/s) that I believe the OP is actually asking about. – FumbleFingers Mar 19 '24 at 17:53
"...the core of the question is Why is it "no friends" and not "no friend"?" The answer to that question is "Because the correct rule is 'not one'". – gotube Mar 21 '24 at 08:41
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@gotube: That rule is completely irrelevant here. It's more subtle with no friend/s*, but you've only got to compare #1 He has no wife* and #2 He has no wives to see that not only are both perfectly valid, but they mean different things (if we encounter #2, we can reasonably assume speaker and/or addressee and/or subject are members of a polygamous society0~. – FumbleFingers Mar 21 '24 at 11:18
@FumbleFingers The OP gives the "two or more" rule as the source of their confusion. It's possibly the only relevant thing here. – gotube Mar 23 '24 at 05:26
@gotube: I give up! The OP quite rightly says he doesn't understand why it's plural *no Xs, and half the people here keep going on about the use of "zero" as a "quantifier" (which I continue to insist is both marginally grammatical and* totally irrelevant). All that matters here is that OP should appreciate that *He has no wife* is in fact more likely than *He has no wives* among native Anglophones for cultural reasons. Once the OP realises that, he should have no problem applying the same understanding to *no friend/s*. But we're obviously not gonna convince each other! – FumbleFingers Mar 23 '24 at 11:33

Jay · Answer 2 · 2024-03-19T04:15:55.990

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The rule is not "two or more". The rule is "not equal to one". Zero takes a plural verb. "Zero books are on the shelf", NOT "Zero books is on the shelf." Likewise for words that mean zero, like "no" or "none". "None of the books are red", NOT "None of the books is red." "No dogs are here", NOT "No dogs is here". Etc.

You could say "She has no friends" or "She has no friend". Both are valid and it would be difficult to say if there is a difference in meaning between the two. That is, "no" can take either a singular or a plural noun. If you said, "She has zero friends", you must use the plural. You can't say, "She has zero friend". In the case of zero, the rule is, like for verbs, not "two or more" but "not one".

edited Mar 19 '24 at 04:15

answered Mar 18 '24 at 12:27

Jay

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But "no man is an island". – Stuart F Mar 18 '24 at 12:35
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This is a good point. I find that learners coming from languages lacking numeric inflection often misapply arithmetic to determine grammatical number, which doesn't work and can lead to errors in constructing correct sentences such as the following: An idea is* good. No idea is good. Ideas are good. No ideas are good. More than one idea is good. Fewer than two ideas are good.* The last two are especially prone to error. – tchrist Mar 18 '24 at 12:58
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I was always taught that None of the books is red was correct (none meaning not one). – Kate Bunting Mar 18 '24 at 13:00
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The question doesn't ask why the *verb* is in the singular! It asks why the *noun* is singular (why don't we say "She has no friend") – FumbleFingers Mar 18 '24 at 16:16
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"The sign said, 'Beware of dog,' but I saw no dog." It might be nice if there were a simple rule for this, but telling a learner that "no" always takes a plural is likely to confuse them when they come across one of the many times it doesn't. – David K Mar 18 '24 at 21:08
@StuartF Good example. It's a weird kind of construction. "There is none" and "there are none" are both correct. I wonder if this has to do with the concept of zero being a relatively new notion relative to language. A related weirdness is that 'never' is a time, at least linguistically. – JimmyJames Mar 18 '24 at 21:41
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@David K: That's an excellent example (except for the lack of an article in the standard "Beware of the* dog!"). A person reading such a sign might reasonably say I see no dog* or I don't see any dog in the singular. But if they were on a country walk with someone who'd just said "There are hundreds of rabbits in these fields", they'd most likely use the plural I see no rabbits or I don't see any rabbits. It's *contextual expectation* that governs the plurality of some non-existent "thing(s)". – FumbleFingers Mar 18 '24 at 21:55
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I really can't understand why this answer keeps getting upvotes. The question is nothing to do with the plurality of zero, and in any case, constructions like "Zero books are on the shelf" are barely grammatical in the first place. The plurality of (one or more things or people) depends entirely on context, and sometimes both can be available with slightly different nuances depending on contextual focus and/or expectation: *No man is an island, but No men are to be trusted*. – FumbleFingers Mar 18 '24 at 22:23
@FumbleFingers It is absolutely about context in many cases. The context could be fairly subtle, too. "Whitemoor is a good place to catch a rabbit." "Nonsense. There are no rabbits anywhere near there." The first statement mentions a rabbit, but it implicitly says there are many rabbits in Whitemoor. ... By the way, it's "Beware of dog" because that's often (though not always) how it's written on a sign. https://www.compliancesigns.com/pd/beware-of-dog-sign-pke-16711-pets-pet-waste – David K Mar 18 '24 at 23:12
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And amazingly this answer still gets upvotes even hours after it's been pointed out that it's about the wrong part of speech entirely as far as this question is concerned. – David K Mar 18 '24 at 23:16
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@FumbleFingers: I can sort of understand why, since I almost upvoted this, actually almost commented the same idea before seeing your answer and comments under this answer. "zero" is in the question title (which is what I clicked on in HNQ to get here), and zero goes with an "s" suffix in English (zero foxes, one fox, two foxes). So that was an error I was focused on when landing on this page from just seeing the title. It took a while to realize that wasn't the answer to the "has no friends" phrasing since "no" can work differently from "zero". Surprisingly less trivial than I expected. – Peter Cordes Mar 19 '24 at 03:05
@PeterCordes: I think zero foxes, one fox, two foxes,... is just "geek speak"! It's not syntactically valid by normal standards. I'm fine with "The number of times this exact utterance has been previously written is zero", which matches the use in the question title. But I can't really endorse "There are zero prior instances", as per the above answer. For me. it's gotta be "There are no prior instances" (or "There is no prior instance", which is arguably more emphatic). – FumbleFingers Mar 19 '24 at 03:42
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@FumbleFingers: You're claiming it's not syntactically valid to say "there are zero foxes in the yard" when someone asks for the count? Only natural numbers (whole numbers excluding zero) like "there is one fox in the yard"? So you'd exclude zero from the cardinal numbers (grammar concept not math). Or you were thinking that I was stringing those counts together as a single sentence counting from zero, and objecting to that? – Peter Cordes Mar 19 '24 at 03:56
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@FumbleFingers: Ok, fair enough, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_numeral doesn't mention zero either. So how about an example like "the distance between those points is currently zero meters". Like if you were reading off a measurement from a measuring device, or looking at points on graph paper. You only omit the "s" on the unit for exactly `one meter", not any other number. e.g. "one point one meters". – Peter Cordes Mar 19 '24 at 04:02
@fumblefingers RE plurality of verb vs noun: Good point, I got off on a bit of a tangent. I've updated my answer. – Jay Mar 19 '24 at 04:16
@PeterCordes "The number of friends is zero" is not what the question is about. The question is about "no friend". If the question where about whether to say "zero friend" or "zero friends" there would be no question about whether "friend" or "friends" is better. ("Friend" would be very definitely incorrect.) The only question would be how much to discourage someone from using either of those constructions. – David K Mar 19 '24 at 04:31
@DavidK: Right, I know that. I'm just taking a guess at FumbleFingers' question about why people are still upvoting this answer. Because the phrasing of the question title (which got me to click on it in HNQ) got me thinking in terms of "zero friend" vs. "zero friends". I guess multiple people just looked for an answer that said that and upvoted it because they were thinking the same way and didn't really read the question. – Peter Cordes Mar 19 '24 at 04:37
@DavidK: No need to get sniffy! I'm just pointing out that it's "marked" syntax (truncated like headlinese, but for different reasons) that non-native Anglophones should be careful not to imitate in normal contexts. – FumbleFingers Mar 19 '24 at 04:44
@FumbleFingers Well, then, why not just say so in so many words in the first place? Non-native Anglophones would be properly warned (in a way that generalizes to other cases, headlinese or otherwise) and everyone would be happy. – David K Mar 19 '24 at 04:51
@DavidK: I didn't intend to snipe when I first mentioned the missing article - I just assumed it was a typo, never having seen one of those "minimalist" signs before. To be honest, I thought such signs were bordering on illegal anyway - I'm pretty certain the keeper of a dangerous dog can't avoid being prosecuted if it attacks the postman, on the grounds that he put up a warning sign. Whatever - I apologise for whatever I got wrong. – FumbleFingers Mar 19 '24 at 05:06
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@FumbleFingers Apology accepted. ¶ Maybe all those people are fans of the Satyricon ("cave canem"). For my part, I was surprised to learn (when I read the article about dangerous dogs in San Antonio) that in that city, when a dog is deemed dangerous, a warning sign is legally required (along with an insurance bond to cover liability). I had previously assumed that all such signs were voluntary and intended as threats. (I've seen worse.) – David K Mar 19 '24 at 05:57
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Re: "The rule is 'not equal to one'": Though funnily enough, we say "exactly 1.0 pounds", not *"exactly 1.0 pound". – ruakh Mar 19 '24 at 07:04
Interesting, @ruakh. I agree, but I think there is something else going on there. After all, we also say "exactly one pound", and we do not say "exactly one pounds". – John Bollinger Mar 19 '24 at 15:42
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Fractions use the singular form, though. ("She has half an apple", not "apples".) – dan04 Mar 19 '24 at 16:25
@dan04 True ... if you use the construct "[fraction] of an [object]", like "half an apple", "a quarter of a gallon", etc. I think the logic of that is that you're saying this fraction of one, and one is singular. But if you use decimal fractions, we use plural. "She has 0.4 gallons of gas", etc, not "0.4 gallon". – Jay Mar 20 '24 at 14:06
"No man is an island".
This is an interesting point. But investigating what the sentence is actually saying can bring some understanding to the syntax.

The concept is suggesting a specific scenario - "1 man can either be 1 island, or not".

So the subject, or "man", is specifically singular. Another wording would be "no [singular] man is an island".

Contrast that to saying "no men are an island". This is essentially stating that no group of men can be one island - which is not the point.
– David Maness Mar 20 '24 at 16:41
I'll note that there's a big difference between "technically correct" and, "sounds normal to native speakers." "She has no friend" fails at the latter. – Brian Mar 20 '24 at 17:26
@FumbleFingers, "no man" is special, and not the same as "zero men". If you count backwards, "two men", "one man", "zero men"/"no men", you'll see "no man" isn't actually counting men. And if we aren't counting, we don't have zero, so pluralization doesn't apply. "no man" is somewhat poetic, being a philosophical concept, and does somewhat encompass and relate to "no men". If it was a new term it might have a hyphen, or require quotation marks, but it is already part of the common parlance and therefore (in English), it is valid. – yeerk Mar 20 '24 at 21:33

score 7 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 18 '24 at 21:33

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In English we use the basic form of a noun for a count of exactly one, and the plural form for every other number.

It's hard to say why that is - that's just the rule in English.

The rules are different in other languages. For instance in French zero is treated like one. The Unicode consortium, which promotes multi-lingual computing, has a nice comparison table showing the rules in many languages: Language Plural Rules.

It's intended as a reference for people making software, but may be interesting.

answered Mar 18 '24 at 21:33

bdsl

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There is no such rule. I have no idea why you would say that. But I have no way of stopping you. Today we had no receptionist on the front desk, and there was no coffee break in the afternoon. This evening there was no performance at the opera house, and there was no game on at the football stadium. My dog has no nose. Then how does he smell? Terrible! – James Martin Mar 19 '24 at 00:52
@JamesMartin: "I call my dog Isaiah", "Really? Why's that?", "'Cos 'e's got one eye's 'igher than the other!". That's the best I can do for a joke, but I will just say it would be "My dog's got no eyes" in a "visual equivalent" to the missing olfactory organ. Precisely because we expect one* nose and two eyes*. – FumbleFingers Mar 19 '24 at 01:31
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@JamesMartin All your examples are negative sentences by they conceptually involve the number one. The main negated scenario you would think of is where you have one of those things not many. As FumbleFingers showed If you have zero of something where one is not a typical amount of it then you use the plural. There are no peas on my plate. – bdsl Mar 19 '24 at 10:53
@bdsl: Exactly! There are no peas in the saucepan, and there is no chicken in the oven. We certainly wouldn't be likely to say There is no pea in the saucepan, and there are no chickens in the oven. – FumbleFingers Mar 19 '24 at 20:22
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@bdsl Yes indeed! and that's what you should be explaining if you want to answer the question. No use just saying that "no" always goes with the plural of a countable noun, since quite often it doesn't. – James Martin Mar 19 '24 at 22:38
"No" is not a numeral, so those rules doesn't really work here. But with "zero" instead of "no" it works exactly like you said. – user28434 Mar 21 '24 at 16:53
@FumbleFingers, "We certainly wouldn't be likely to say … there are no chickens in the oven." — unless you put multiple chickens in the oven, and then came back to check the oven and you found none. – user28434 Mar 21 '24 at 16:56

score 4 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 18 '24 at 11:21

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You mean "if a countable noun is two or more it is plural! We also usually use the plural with no.

She has no friends is the same as She doesn't have any friends. (Like the old song "Yes, we have no bananas".)

This Ngram shows that "...has no friend" was used more often in the past - but it is usually used when some description of the non-existent friend is added.

Poor Charles has no friend in the house.

He has no friend who is worthy of the name.

answered Mar 18 '24 at 11:21

Kate Bunting

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I don't see how this answers the question. It's not common to say She has no friend, but syntactically that's perfectly valid, as is He has no wife. And we'd only expect plural *He has no wives*** if we were talking about someone from a polygamous society (not common among Anglophone cultures!). – FumbleFingers Mar 18 '24 at 16:21
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I was just trying to explain that "has no friends/apples/books/whatever" is correct and normal, but "has no friend" isn't always wrong. – Kate Bunting Mar 18 '24 at 16:45
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Yes, but the way you've presented things implies that the only context where singular has no X works is if the utterance includes some adverbial element limiting the scope of "X" - in such a way that the important distinction is between *no* X's and *even one* X. Which I suppose is true when it comes to whether the average |Anglophone male has *a wife* or not. I'd also just mention I'm not convinced Yes, we have no bananas is helpful here. To the average Anglophone, that's at least to some extent a "parody" ("marginal" grammar from non-Anglophone growers / sellers). – FumbleFingers Mar 18 '24 at 16:59

No Name · Answer 5 · 2024-03-20T11:14:08.860

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"No" in this context is a determiner, and has two similar, but slightly different, meanings. Sometimes it means "not a", in which case it takes the singular, just like "a" by itself, and sometimes it means "not any", in which case it (can) take the plural, just like "any" by itself. Note that there is no language that has a "nullary" number, as "zero" as a concept is actually quite recent, it was always "not a", or "not any", or "not (whatever determiner best suited the grammatical number of the noun in question)". As a result, nullary determiners ("no" in English) have variable number within languages, and the word for "zero" has variable number across languages (in English, it's plural, in French, it's singular).

Confusing? Yes. But then, so is the concept of nothing as something

edited Mar 20 '24 at 11:14

answered Mar 19 '24 at 07:05

No Name

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There are plenty of examples where it's grammatical to use a singular noun with "any". According to Ngrams, the phrase "any man" is much more common than "any men", for example; likewise "any student" vs. "any students". Consider sentences like "If any student arrives late in school, without an authorised absence, they will receive a sanction." – kaya3 Mar 19 '24 at 17:01
I like your point about "zero" as a concept is actually quite recent, which I think is relevant here. And of course, "zero" as a "determiner / quantifier" is extremely recent. Until about 20 years ago, it almost never occurred except as the "jargon" set phrase "zero tolerance" (which itself only really popped up in the late 60s / early 70s). Now it's used as a general-purpose "negating quantifier" everywhere. – FumbleFingers Mar 19 '24 at 22:05

score 2 · Answer 6 · answered Mar 21 '24 at 10:28

Because English, as usual, is just unpredictable

For countables, "zero" uses plural. For uncountables, zero can use singular. That's why you have zero friends (you can have 2 - countable) and have zero interest in something (you can have some, or a lot - uncountable)

As is tradition in English, there are always exceptions. For example, both "zero interests" and "zero interest" exist, because they both refer to distinctly different concepts: former is a stake in a certain area (has nothing to do with desire for knowledge), latter is the want to know more (has nothing to do with loss or gain), then there's a different "zero interests" as in you have no desire to know about anything

Then there's ANOTHER kind of exception. If you're referring to a known subject, then you defer to that. For example, if you're out in the wilds and observe the distinct lack of dogs, you say "there are zero dogs", because you're talking about the concept of "dog" in general If you see a sign saying "beware of dog" and you notice the dog in question is not there, then you say "there is zero dog", because now you're talking about a specific dog, not just any dog

Normally however, you'd use "no dog(s)" because you're not trying to count, you're just observing the binary yes/no of the existence of a concept.

score 2 · Answer 7 · edited Mar 22 '24 at 18:13

The rule two or more is not as correct as the rule not one. The rule should be "Add an 's' if the number of items is not (positive) one."

The following sentences are correct:

"I have one car."
"My friend has two cars."
"After losing fifty percent of my car to rust, I now own 0.5 cars."
"After losing fifty percent of my car to rust, I now own half a car."
"I had one car. Then I gave away two cars. That leaves me with -1 cars."

score 1 · Answer 8 · answered Mar 18 '24 at 23:25

When we say a thing.. "a" denotes one as in singular.

Everything else, including zero, is plural.

If there isn't something signifying that it's a singular item then it's best to presume that it's plural.

An example that often trips up people is the difference between "people" and "person"... If we are talking about a single identifiable person or idea of a person then it's singular... If we are talking about many identifiable or countable individuals than it would be "persons"... And if it is a group of people that are not individually countable or identifiable then you would say "people"... If there are multiple groups of people that are separately identifiable then you would say something such as "both peoples"...

The indigenous people of North America and the indigenous people of South America to together combined to be "the peoples of North and South America".

I don't think the fact that *people* can be seen as the "plural" of (etymologically unrelated) *person* - but is itself singular, and can thus be regularly pluralised to *peoples* - is relevant to the question. — FumbleFingers, Mar 19 '24 at 01:18

Line Item · Answer 9 · 2024-03-21T04:58:56.177

It has to do with context. If it is part of a paragraph, and if in the conversation the topic is friends (plural), and a question is asked or the subject breached of her friends (plural), then the answer or sentence addressing the discussion should be within the same logic.

Example:
Bob has lots of friends. Jimmy has a few friends. But Lisa, I think that she says she has no friends.

friends. friends. friends.

"Bob has lots of friends," is a description of how many friends (plural).

"Jimmy has a few friends," is a description of how many friends (plural). The conversation is already about friends (plural), and in this description few could actually be one. But, to keep with the conversation, the plural version is used, and also because of the potential or more than one.

"But Lisa, I think that she says she has no friends," follows or is conversationally aligned inside of the paragraph with a description of how many friends (plural) that a person has. Having used two descriptions that include the plural "friends," has set a precedent of using the plural until the end of the paragraph. It could be set by one use, but for a stronger example you see here two.

So if the conversation revolved around the topic of jobs, plural, e.g. A I've two jobs at the moment. B I know someone who has three different jobs. C I have no jobs**. Would C's reply still be OK? — Mari-Lou A, Mar 21 '24 at 10:02
@mari-Lou, Yes. It would be OK. I was addressing the question which asked "why is "friends" still plural?" If the conversation was about a plural, then it is OK to answer with a plural. - That does not mean that to answer with a singular, such as, "I have no job," would not be OK also. It would be OK also, depending upon the person making the statement and their intent to change the conversation or not. Again, it has to do with the context of the conversation. We are given one sentence without sufficiently more of the conversation to judge the sentence. I leave out what was already left out. — Line Item, Mar 31 '24 at 01:34

score 0 · Answer 10 · edited Mar 24 '24 at 05:53

In English counting "zero" values requires pluralization. Sometimes "no" means "zero", sometimes it is used as negation.

Counting is almost always valid, and negation is almost always valid, the one you choose to use depends on your intent and the context. Negation always preserves the plurality of the original statement.

If there is a question or implied question, it is usually best to use negation, which will never change the plurality of the question. For example, for the following statement:

You need a friend to enter.

A possible answer is:

I have no friend with me.

This is only because the question was singular and you are intended to negate it. If you responded with "I have no friends with me", it would be awkward, as it would mean you both pluralized and negated the original statement, where you should have only negated it.

Often times due to the ambiguity the use of "no" for "zero" is avoided, and can come across as a mistake. It is sometimes also used to emphasize certain words.

It will come across as more clear if you work around "no" for negation, such as:

I do not have a friend with me.

This makes it clear you want to negate the "friend with me" clause, instead of trying to count how many friends you have with you.

You say (1)"In English counting "zero" values requires pluralization", but then you say (2) that "I have no friend with me" (which has a zero value, but is singular) is a valid statement in English. (1) and (2) can't both be true. Could you [edit] your answer to clarify what you mean by "requires"? — gotube, Mar 24 '24 at 06:00

score 0 · Answer 11 · edited Mar 24 '24 at 05:47

It depends on the expectation. If I expect that you have zero or one, you would use the singular. If I expect that you have zero, one or more, you would use the plural.

I have no father. I have a father.
I have no mother. I have a mother.
I have no parents. I have one parent. I have two parents.

The normal expectation is to have one father, one mother, two parents. So you use "no" with singular for father or mother, and with plural for parents, and "a father", "a mother" vs. "one parent".

There may be two people you call "father", for example your mother's ex-husband and her current husband, or two gay parents. As long as that isn't expected by the person asking you, you would give the same answer, but of course the answer could be "two fathers". If I asked "was your father at the football game" and you have two people you call "father", you might answer "One of my fathers was at the game."

A situation where I expect several: "How many fathers and mothers were at the school meeting?" might have an answer "There were no fathers but seven mothers present". "No fathers" has the plural because it was likely that there were several.

In the sentence "She says she has no friends," the number of friends is zero, why is "friends" still plural?

11 Answers11