Noun Plurals in Children's Stories: A Statistical Study
Jahad M. Hamdan, Department of English Language & Literature, Faculty of Foreign Languages, University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan
Ibrahim Khalil, Department of Arabic, Language & Literature, Faculty
of Arts, University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan
Abstract
This paper addresses the noun plural forms in children's stories. First, it identifies them, then it examines them from a statistical perspective with a view to obtaining, on the basis of a corpus, rather than on subjective grounds, precise results pertinent to the exact frequency of each form. This may serve two main purposes. The first is linguistic, namely, to correct some concepts concerning these plural forms, and the second is
educational, i.e. to assist in the process of revising school textbooks so that they give more emphasis to the most common plurar forms, and eliminate or place less emphasis on the infrequent and less common ones.
For the purpose of this study, the researchers have reviewed thirty three stories (the sample) to trace and identify the plural forms used in them. The findings indicate that the Broken Plural "afa'al أفعال " is the most common, followed by the Sound Feminine Plural. The less common and infrequent forms are provided in the tables on the basis of the data extracted from the corpus.