"The fact that he slept with the victim and his knife had blood was enough evidence for him to be the culprit."
Why does it seem like you never use the plural "facts" in these sentences even when you're referring to multiple facts?
4
-
See 1.3 definition. oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/fact.– user140086Commented May 31, 2016 at 9:28
-
@Wuvex Please give (or link to) an example of a sentence that uses "the fact that" to refer to multiple facts.– LawrenceCommented May 31, 2016 at 10:12
-
The example I've given has two facts, namely, "he slept with the victim" and "his knife had blood," yet the singular "fact" is used.– WuvexCommented May 31, 2016 at 10:42
-
1"The fact that" appears to be a set phrase. You don't need to worry about plurals here. And sometimes "the facts don't add up" is used as a set phrase.– NVZ ♦Commented May 31, 2016 at 11:21
Add a comment
|
2 Answers
The fact that is not a constituent, so it can't be singular or plural. What is singular is the noun fact.
That is the introduction to a conjoined clause (that he slept with the victim and his knife had blood),
which modifies fact.
That whole noun phrase
- the fact that he slept with the victim and his knife had blood
is singular (because fact is singular and it's the head noun of the noun phrase).
One could also say
- the facts that he slept with the victim and his knife had blood
since there are two facts. But, just to be clear what's being pluralized when using the plural, I'd repeat that after and, and maybe add a comma.
- the facts that he slept with the victim, and that his knife had blood
answered Aug 23, 2023 at 22:35
According to the Oxford Dictionary1, the word 'Fact' is a mass noun.
Wikipedia2:
In linguistics, a mass noun, uncountable noun, or non-count noun is a noun with the syntactic property that any quantity of it is treated as an undifferentiated unit, rather than as something with discrete subsets
This is why you rarely see the word 'fact' pluralised.
-
2'Fact' is commonly used as a count noun. For example: "The facts indicate...", "These two facts suggest...", "Those are the facts". Commented Jun 8, 2016 at 13:23
-
The word 'fact' is pluralised in NVZ's last comment above. "The facts don't add up" is a relatively common phrase, as is "These are the facts ..."– TrevorDCommented Jun 8, 2016 at 13:23
-
2The Oxford Dictionary link is just indicating that it's a mass noun in the set phrase body of fact, not that it is ordinarily a mass noun. Commented Jun 8, 2016 at 13:25