Timeline for Many 'this of that' - why does usage invert for dogs? [duplicate]
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
10 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jan 31, 2018 at 7:31 | history | closed |
FumbleFingers curiousdannii CommunityBot |
Duplicate of Types of things vs. types of thing | |
| Jan 31, 2018 at 3:54 | comment | added | Phil Sweet | Yep, you can get a lot of false positives with the singular just being the start of a compound (plural) noun. More Ngrams | |
| Jan 30, 2018 at 17:26 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | These Ngrams seem to show that it's pretty idiosyncratic. Using 'breeds/kinds of horse/s' reveals that in these cases, the plural form is favoured. | |
| Jan 30, 2018 at 14:22 | comment | added | Phil M Jones | I can't answer, as I'm in the 25% who would say "many breeds of dog." | |
| Jan 30, 2018 at 14:18 | review | Close votes | |||
| Jan 31, 2018 at 7:35 | |||||
| Jan 30, 2018 at 14:14 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @Colin: I can't see any real consistency here. According to Google Books, plural two kinds of cars is almost twice as common as singular two kinds of car (the opposite preference to that implied by OP's many makes example). On the other hand, I'm not surprised to see that singular two kinds of wine is seven times as common as plural two kinds of wines, which reflects OP's examples for that particular noun. | |
| Jan 30, 2018 at 14:01 | comment | added | Colin Fine | Interesting observation. The case of wine and food is different, because those are often used uncountably. But car vs. dog is hard to account for. | |
| Jan 30, 2018 at 14:00 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | I'm not sure I'd like to have to come up with an accurate figure for the number of dogs or cars in the world either. | |
| Jan 30, 2018 at 13:57 | history | edited | Edwin Ashworth | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 26 characters in body
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| Jan 30, 2018 at 13:50 | history | asked | Nigel J | CC BY-SA 3.0 |