Plural forms of criterion

The classification presented in Table 4 (Section 6.3.3) is only applicable to the foreign plural

criteria because, explicitly and visibly ending in -s, the other two plural forms are not confused with singular use. Therefore, criterions and criterias are discussed without a quantified classification in this section.

7.3.1 Criteria in BrE

Compared to the previous two nouns, the plural forms of criterion are straightforward to analyze because there is no semantic dispersion into several senses. The primary interest lies in

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investigating the distribution between the plural and singular uses, and any unclear or peculiar tokens. The distribution for criteria in BrE is the following:

Table 13. Classification and token distribution of criteria in BrE

Classification Number of tokens out of 150 Percentage

A. Plural 139 92.66%

B. Singular 9 6%

C. Unclear 1 0.67%

D. Proper noun 1 0.67%

Whether the 6% of tokens used as a singular form is as ‘widespread’ as some of the dictionaries reported (see Section 5.4.4) is debatable, but certainly the usage exists in the corpus data as well.

Category A tokens often had determiners, verb agreement or other clues to enable the classification.

Furthermore, a knowledge of the real world is sometimes necessary in qualitative analysis. For instance, the phrase “money lending criteria” requires no grammatical clues because a situation with only one criterion is simply absurd. One notable feature of category A tokens was their very frequent (not quantified) occurrence in different versions of the lexicalized phrase “meet the criteria”.

At least two of the category B tokens were found in online newspaper articles inside quotes from interviewed people. For example, token 125:

A spokesman said it was “standard procedure whilst police investigations were ongoing”

and added: “If a person has been arrested on suspicion of sexual offences one criteria stipulates they can’t be left alone with children.”

Some of the singular uses apparently occurred in various web site comment sections. These two observations indicate informal and/or spoken language. One token referred to the name of a recording studio, and one fell into category C due to structural ambiguities in the context.

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Compared to BrE, category B is slightly more frequent in AmE. The preferred use is predominantly in the plural and, as before, many occurrences of the phrase “meet the criteria” were encountered.

Table 14. Classification and token distribution of criteria in AmE

Classification Number of tokens out of 150 Percentage

A. Plural 135 90%

B. Singular 14 9.33%

C. Unclear 1 0.67%

What is interesting about the use as a singular form in AmE, is that the usage can be found in the speech of high profile individuals in more or less formal contexts. For example, token 20 occurs in a Time Magazine interview of former United States president Barack Obama:

"So what I'm trying to do is to take the best ideas from either party, with one criteria, one filter, and that is: Is this helping to grow the middle class, build the middle class and create ladders of opportunity for people?"

A similar instance occurs in an NBC News interview of a U.S. senator (token 287). Otherwise, category B tokens occur in various contexts from online newspaper articles to comment sections of a blog website.

7.3.3 Criterions in BrE and AmE

Table 3 in Section 6.3.1 displayed a distribution of 5 tokens in BrE and 11 in AmE for the regular plural. This is radically fewer than the combined 20797 tokens of criteria.

If the distributions in Tables 13 and 14 are used as a guideline to conclude that the singular use of criteria is somewhere between six and nine percent as a whole, it would mean that even the singular use alone is approximately a hundred times more frequent than the regular plural form.

Criterions is obviously a very marginal phenomenon. Nevertheless, it has been recorded from at least the 18^th century on, as pointed out in Section 5.4.4, and among the tokens in the GloWbE corpus, there is one (BrE, token 1) dating back to that period.

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Otherwise it seems that the regular plural occurs in informal contexts, usually in web site comment sections but once also in a scientific publication⁸ (AmE, token 6): “The maximum iterations were set to be ten with zero convergence criterions.”

Due to the very small number of tokens it is not certain whether the frequency difference between BrE and AmE reflects the situation more generally, or if it simply occurs coincidentally in the corpus data.

7.3.4 Criterias in BrE and AmE

After purging the tokens that have the same web source, the distribution of criterias is 14 in BrE and 8 in AmE. Both the low number of tokens and the contexts they are found in resemble those of criterions. This analogous plural occurs in comment sections or, for example, in a transcript of an interview (BrE, token 3): “The criterias have to be wide enough for every sport to make its case.”

On the basis of the corpus data, the plural forms of criterion are heavily dominated by the use of the foreign plural. The less frequent plural forms ending in -s are more marginal than the singular use of criteria. Keeping in mind Peters’ (2004: 133) observation in Section 5.3.4, the foreign plural form is without question the dominant form of the word. When compared to the other plural forms, even the singular use of criteria is significantly more frequent.