Faithful Companion — 17 of 17

Chapter - Plurality Modification

Section - Ambiguously Singular (in place of Section 4 - Enumeration in Plurality by Emily Short)

[This adds a new option, "ambiguously singular." Ambiguously singular things act like ambiguously plural things for the purposes of all the pronoun-setting stuff that is going on in this section, but they don't "act plural" for the purpose of the things that are happening in section 1 of Plurality, so they should use singular verbs etc.]

A thing can be ambiguously plural, ambiguously singular, or ordinarily enumerated. A thing is usually ordinarily enumerated.

Definition: A thing is ambiguous if it is ambiguously plural or it is ambiguously singular.

This is the update ambiguous pronouns for actions rule:

if the noun is a thing and the noun is ambiguous:

notice the plurality of the noun;

if the second noun is a thing and the second noun is ambiguous:

notice the plurality of the second noun.

The update ambiguous pronouns for actions rule is listed after the set pronouns from items from multiple object lists rule in the action-processing rules.

After printing the name of an ambiguous thing (called the suspect) (this is the notice plurality of printed ambiguous object rule):

if the manual pronouns option is active:

do nothing;

otherwise:

notice the plurality of the suspect.

To notice the plurality of (suspect - an object):

(- PlugPlural({suspect}); -)

Include (-

[ PlugPlural obj;

SetPronoun('them', obj);

SetPronoun('it', obj);

];

-)

Use Manual Pronouns translates as (- Constant MANUAL_PRONOUNS; -)

To have the parser notice (o - an object):

if o is ambiguous, notice the plurality of o;

otherwise set pronouns from o.

[The following is a legacy item in case people are still using it in their code, but "set pronouns from..." will work just as well.]

To notice (o - an object) boringly:

(- PronounNotice({o}); -)