Re: Missing Singulars

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham"
<richard.wordingham@...> wrote:

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@> wrote:
> >
> > On 2008-12-19 09:13, Brian M. Scott wrote:
> >
> > > Unlike 'sand', 'milk', etc., it takes a plural verb: 'the
> > > cattle are in the barn'.
> >
> > It's a collective plural sensu stricto, the clearest example of

one in

> > English. <snip> ... <police> functions like a count plural rather
> > than a collective (it can be used with numerals, while <cattle>

can't).

>
> The prohibition against using numerals with <cattle> is news to me. I
> got 12,900 raw Google hits for '20 cattle', and this was number + noun
> in most cases. I got 10,400 raw Google hits for 'five cattle', and a
> bare majority were for number + noun, albeit sometimes part of a
> compound number (e.g. <thirty-five [sic] cattle>), rather than
> collocations such as <five cattle rustlers> or <one in five cattle>.
> The phrase 'five head of cattle' got 5,600 hits, so the two
> constructions are about equally common in writing.
>
> Richard.
>

In Canada cattle can be used with numbers.

"Tragedies included the loss of 3,000 cattle to a cold winter in 1878
and dire financial times,"

http://www.landwithoutlimits.com/About_the_Region/Stories/The_Saga_of_the_Gang_Ranch

Also since the bulls are usually castrated in cattle ranching
operations, 'steer' becomes the de facto singular of cattle. At least
it's used that way in the Cariboo region of Canada.

Peter P