unicode-org / inflection

code, data and documentation related to handling inflection problems
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Support metadata for countability and separate from grammatical number #16

Open grhoten opened 4 months ago

grhoten commented 4 months ago

We should support metadata to describe countability. For example, take the word "brush". I may consider the quantity "1 brush" and "2 brushes". This is assuming that I'm talking about a brush that I use for painting. That is not the only form of "brush". I can also talk about the brush in the forest. That form of brush is uncountable.

If you consider the phrase "${foodItem} has x calories", you can say "beer has x calories", but you would want to say "carrots have x calories". You would not want to say "beers have x calories", and you wouldn't want to say "carrot has x calories". I mean you could say "a carrot has x calories". The concept of carrots is countable. The concept of beer is uncountable, unless it's a glass of beer, and then it is countable.

If you consider "sheep", you would want to say "sheep have wool" or "the sheep has wool" or "the sheep have wool". It would be awkward to say, "sheep has wool".

This type of property can affect whether you say "have" or "has", which is mostly affected by the grammatical number of the noun being referenced, but it can be affected by countability too.