unmarked (chinese) nouns usually plural

In nouns and nominalisations:

Chinese nouns do not under any circumstances inflect for case, gender or number, though an unmarked common noun is normally assumed as being plural, e.g. 书 shū books rather than book.

The quote is mostly capture for: A noun without a marker is commonly assumed to be plural. I wonder if the authors considered a general category of the noun to just be a special case of plural noun. Most examples I see where a noun isn’t accompanied by a marker it’s standing in for that class of object or acting as a category or group. These are singular things in English, and this book is written in English.

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created: 2025-04-20

(re)generated: 2025-05-25


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