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Comment by Terr_ | Hacker News Reader

I think it extends from whatever rules govern the much-more-influential word "No", particularly for items which aren't normally capped at 1.

Notice how these are all plural, and in each case "no" could be substituted with "zero":

* "My shelf contains no books."

* "Snails have no legs."

* "What if there were no stars in the sky?"

You can't simply replace those examples with a singular noun: You're either forced to refactor the grammar or you end up with something that sounds weird/archaic. Ex:

* "My shelf contains no book." [Weird/archaic]

* "My shelf does not contain a book. [Refactored]

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You are using examples which are typically plural. Consider instead these singular forms:

"My shelf contains no Elf-on-a-Shelf" / "My shelf contains no elephant" / "My shelf contains no Hemingway book." / "My shelf contains no book by Hemingway."

(For an example of the third: "Don't look there for a copy of 'The Old Man and the Sea'? I detest Hemingway, and my shelf contains no Hemingway book." In this case, 'no' means something like 'not even one'.)

As for the others, "legs" rarely come in a singular form. There is (usually) only one king for an entire population, and there is (usually) only one soul per creature, so these singular forms are just fine:

"Snails have no king." / "Snails have no soul."

There's usually a lot of stars, but our solar system has but one sun, making the following singular form just fine:

"What if there were no sun in the sky?"

The 'correct' English is "no books by Hemmingway"

That's "Hemingway" ;)

I think the original sentence was already pretty weird, since I wouldn't say "My shelf contains no books." making it hard for me to judge what is not weird.

However, "Does your shelf contain a book by Hemingway?" sounds equally correct to "No, my shelf contains no book by Hemingway."

And equally correct to "My shelf contains no books."

Upon review, I realized the parallel construction in "No, my shelf contains no book by Hemingway, but it does contain one by Hemmingway" would help smooth things out.

More to the point, https://archive.org/details/stephencranebiog00stal/page/40/m... has this real-world example: "Although Crane’s list of books at Brede Place contains no book by James Fenimore Cooper, he obviously knew his Cooper."

“My shelf contains no book” almost wants to become “my shelf contains no such book!” to my eye. Like the book is cursed or forbidden, haha.

"My car has no steering wheel", though, so isn't it related to how many you'd expect?

I'd say steering wheels are "normally capped at 1"... although I recall one distinct occasion where I expected two steering wheels, in a training car for new drivers. Alas, it seemed the local school-district could only afford a car with a second brake-pedal for the instructor, which did very little to help my anxieties.

So my first time behind the (singular) wheel and they told me to pull onto a major street next to the school, without even doing circles in a parking lot or anything. I guess they just expected most students had already done some illicit/private driving? Anywho, it was more stressful than any rollercoaster and I had shaky legs when my turn was finally over.

(Then I put an onion on my belt, as was the style of the time...)

The exceptions are always fun: https://imgs.classicfm.com/images/41395?crop=16_9&width=660&...

In France, training cars have only one steering wheel, and the instructor is perfectly able to drive the vehicle by steering with his extended left arm.

This is standard in the US as well, probably almost everywhere. But as the comment says, there's always an exception.

Exactly right. Op uses “snails have no legs” because most things have 2+ legs or none. But snails do have one foot. If there was a snail without a foot, you’d say “this one has no foot”

> You can't naively rewrite those examples with a singular

"What if there was no star in the sky?" does not sound particularly weird, and we can find instances of people using that exact phrase. If we focus on the key aspect of that statement, "no star in the sky" appears to be commonly used.

This example does sound wrong to a native English speaker. It contains a subjunctive mood construct and the correct version would be:

"What if there were no stars in the sky?"

"What if there were no star in the sky?" also works even if you want to use the subjunctive.

Note that not all native speakers of English use or prefer this type of construction. Also, this use of "were" instead of "was" is sometimes now called irrealis and considered separate from the subjunctive (which is then used to refer only to constructions like "it's important that you be here early tomorrow").

It doesn't really. I'd immediately think "what about the rest of them?". "Not a star" works, but that's because it is made indefinite by the article. I wonder if the point here is that in English, dropping the article implies "the" in a way it doesn't in other languages.

It may found in usage, but then so is "liek"..

At the end of the day there is accepted grammar and there is actual usage.

If you ask people for the accepted grammar they will give you something most people accept. Which is not "What if there were no star in the sky?"

At the end of the day there is only "the reader understands" and "the reader does not understand", with the former being the goal of the author. There is some benefit in using what is conventional to help achieve the desired outcome, but beyond that it matters not.

> "What if there was no star in the sky?" does not sound particularly weird

I disagree: The most-charitable scenario I can think of is that someone has context-shifted from regular "stars" to "our sun, Sol, which is technically a star even though we typically consider it separate from the rest."

In other words, it involves a situation where someone is assuming the amount is capped at 1. (Yes, I know binary stars exist.)

Compare:

* "What if there was no star for Earth to orbit?" [Works because =1 is the normal assumption in this context]

* "What if there was no star in the night sky?" [This is weird.]

* "What if there was no constellation?" [This is also weird.]

> I disagree

With what? English is defined by use, and we can find untold examples of "No star in the sky."

> we can find untold examples

"All birds have eyes" != "All things that have eyes are birds."

My hypothesis is that wherever we speak about "zero" and some quantity, it seems like we can substitute "no", and the pluralization rules we'd use for "no" are being inherited.

In contrast, it sounds like you're going the opposite direction, starting with sentences that contain "no" where we cannot drop-in "zero". For example, "No star in the sky is green" cannot become "Zero star in the sky is green."

> If I say all rodents are mammals, you can't disprove that just by pointing out the existence of dogs and cats.

Without a full understanding of the intent and background behind that statement that is not clear. It might be disprovable under some circumstances. If we take it to the logical extreme, the words absolutely could be defined such that it is disprovable, so it obviously could be.

Is that likely? In this case, probably not, but it becomes more likely when there is more fractured use. Consider tech jargon. The marjory of the discussions on HN are parties talking past each other because they came with different understandings of what words/phrases mean.

> "No star in the sky is green"

I wrote "No star in the sky<period>" to try and steer us away from different contexts. While I acknowledge that such usage also exists, that is outside of what I was trying to refer to and I think you will agree that in your interpretation that usage is not in line with what we are talking about.

Such is the downfall of languages made up on the spot as they are used. All you can do is try and convey something to the recipient, and sometimes you'll fail. This ended up being a great example of exactly what we're talking about!

There are? A quick search in DDG didn’t find any examples. However I did get multiple examples of “stars” (plural).

While English is defined by use, that doesn’t mean that all forms of slang automatically become grammatically correct.

For example: “no star in the sky” might be common vernacular in some regions but it wouldn’t be appropriate to use in formal writing. It’s also not a phrasing I’ve encountered before.

> we can find untold examples of "No star in the sky."

But the original example was "What if there was no star in the sky?" so your example is irrelevant. The original example sounds weird (to me, a native speaker). But "No star in the sky is a triangle" sounds OK and contains your example phrase.

It is possible I’ve made a completely imaginary link, but “no star in the sky” sounds slightly odd but in a poetic way. In particular “no star” seems pretty close to “not a star.” I mean, zero stars is technically zero stars.

But if someone says “There was no star in the sky,” I parse that as something like: An astonishingly dark night, I searched the sky quite carefully and found not even one star.

Meanwhile I parse “no stars in the sky” as: a very dark night, I didn’t see any stars.

Of course really, it is always a matter of degree technically, right? The stars are always there. They are just sometimes attenuated to the point where your eye doesn’t detect them.

All of this is meaningless without the context found around the usage, of course, being that the language is entirely dependent on context. But let's assume for the sake of discussion a context of us both standing side by side looking at the night sky.

If I said "There is no star in the sky", are you going to be unclear about what I am trying to say, yet understand me perfectly if I said "There are no stars in the sky"?

It sounds natural to me only if you're expecting exactly one star. For example:

The Three Wise Men are back. But this time, there's no star in the sky to guide them.

    [A lesser light asks Ummon⫽
     What are the activities of a sramana>⫽
     Ummon answers⫽
     I have not the slightest idea⑊⫽
     The dim light then says⫽
     Why haven’t you any idea>⫽
     Ummon replies⫽
     I just want to keep my no-idea]
    ⠀

I'm not seeing a "zero" in there that would allow us to test if it can be replaced with "no."

I would not expect that no->zero is, er, grammatically symmetric to zero->no.

空

Isn't it usually 無 for zen koans?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_(negative)

Ummon understood nothing.

I have no idea what you are talking about. /s

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