Singular and plural preferences among adjectival collocates of CAT and DOG

The singular vs. plural distinction in English count nouns is not usually considered as being of any real consequence to the choice of adjectives accompanying these nouns. This study questions this assumption and explores the pre-nominal adjectives occurring with cat/cats and dog/dogs with a view to identifying the main patterns of co-occurrence with singular forms vs. plural forms. Attributive adjectives occurring before cat(s) and dog(s) were investigated, relying on a corpus of contemporary American fiction. Applying Distinctive Collexeme Analysis to the corpus results, it was found that coherent groups of adjectives occurred preferentially with the singular or plural of both words. Colour adjectives and evaluative adjectives like good, for example, occurred preferentially with the singular forms, while adjectives such as stray, wild, and feral occurred preferentially with plural forms. The usage differences observed in the data can be motivated by reference to a folk model of the world in which animals take their place as house pets, wild animals, or somewhere in between.