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Channel: In the sentence "She says she has no friends," the number of friends is zero, why is "friends" still plural? - English Language Learners Stack Exchange
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Answer by Jay for In the sentence "She says she has no friends," the number...

The rule is not "two or more". The rule is "not equal to one". Zero takes a plural verb. "Zero books are on the shelf", NOT "Zero books is on the shelf." Likewise for words that mean zero, like "no" or...

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Answer by Kate Bunting for In the sentence "She says she has no friends," the...

You mean "if a countable noun is two or more it is plural! We also usually use the plural with no.She has no friends is the same as She doesn't have any friends. (Like the old song "Yes, we have no...

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Answer by FumbleFingers for In the sentence "She says she has no friends,"...

It's just that the normal expectation is she would have several friends.We use the singular in contexts like He has no wife, or I have no car. We tend to use "do-support" or "got-support" anyway (He...

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In the sentence "She says she has no friends," the number of friends is zero,...

In the sentence"She says she has no friends", even though the number of friends is zero (less than two), why is "friends" still plural?As an English learner, I have learnt the rule that if a countable...

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Answer by No Name for In the sentence "She says she has no friends," the...

"No" in this context is a determiner, and has two similar, but slightly different, meanings. Sometimes it means "not a", in which case it takes the singular, just like "a" by itself, and sometimes it...

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Answer by Bells Craig for In the sentence "She says she has no friends," the...

When we say a thing.. "a" denotes one as in singular.Everything else, including zero, is plural.If there isn't something signifying that it's a singular item then it's best to presume that it's...

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Answer by bdsl for In the sentence "She says she has no friends," the number...

In English we use the basic form of a noun for a count of exactly one, and the plural form for every other number.It's hard to say why that is - that's just the rule in English.The rules are different...

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Answer by yeerk for In the sentence "She says she has no friends," the number...

As otherwise stated, in English, when counting "zero" is plural. Sometimes "no" means "zero", sometimes it is used as negation.While negation and a count of zero are almost always identical in meaning,...

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Answer by Magmatic for In the sentence "She says she has no friends," the...

The rule two or more is not as correct as the rule not one. The rule should be "Add an 's' if the number of items is not (positive) one."The following sentences are correct:"I have one car.""My friend...

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Answer by Raestloz for In the sentence "She says she has no friends," the...

Because English, as usual, is just unpredictableFor countables, "zero" uses plural. For uncountables, zero can use singular. That's why you have zero friends (you can have 2 - countable) and have zero...

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Answer by Line Item for In the sentence "She says she has no friends," the...

It has to do with context. If it is part of a paragraph, and if in the conversation the topic is friends (plural), and a question is asked or the subject breached of her friends (plural), then the...

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Answer by gnasher729 for In the sentence "She says she has no friends," the...

It depends on the expectation. If I expect that you have zero or one, you would use the singular. If I expect that you have zero, one or more, you would use the plural.I have no father. I have a...

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