“I have two dogs.” “I have one dog.” However, “I have zero dogs.” Huh?
Let’s examine the simple grammatical structure of our example riddle, “I have two/one/zero dog/s”. “I” is the subject; “have” is the verb; and “two/one/zero” is the adjective, as it describes how many of the direct object, “dog/s”. So why exactly does the plural form “dogs” follow “zero”?
English, like a majority of languages in the world, employs what is called a “singular vs. plural” grammatical number system. This means nouns typically have only two forms – singular and plural. Without a third form of a noun, we are forced to choose between the singular and the plural form.
The word “dog” is a countable noun. Therefore, it can be reasoned its plural form is used after “zero” because there can be more than one of them. On the other hand, the word “milk” is a mass noun, i.e. it is not counted. Along the same logic, it can be reasoned its singular form is used after “zero” because there is no plural of it.
Perhaps we should consider starting a campaign to create and adopt a third form of nouns – the zero form – that does not discriminate between countable and mass nouns? If so, I might propose adding an “o” to the noun. For example, “I have no dogo”, or “I have no milko”.
Your proposals for the zero form are welcome!
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