limits

In the kind of wrestling recognised by international sporting organisations, as well as dividing competitors into classes by weight (so that heavyweights only fight heavyweights, and so on), the contests are divided into "rounds" of a few minutes each. At the end of each round the wrestlers have a rest. There are a set number of rounds, so if at the end of the last round neither wrestler has conclusively defeated the other, the judges decide which has fought best and award him the prize.

The writer is saying that this doesn't happen in Mongolia; wrestlers of all sizes compete together, and the contests go on as long as the contestants do - the contest only ends when one defeats the other.

Well, it agrees with the plural subject of "no weight classes" and the consequent plural verb "are".

You would have to make a new sentence, or phrase, to have "time limit" - and there is no need to do so.

"There are no weight classes and there is no time limit in Mongolian wrestling." is what you would have to do - and there is no problem with "time limits" here in English - there are multiple matches, each with no time limit, so plural is fine.



At least, that's how I see it!

I'm faint. Sorry. It seems that it doesn't comply with grammar that I have leant. So confused.

So, Syntinen, could I take it as this: one round- time limit; two or more rounds- time limits?

It is not the desire for parallelism (agreement with the preceding plural element "weight classes") that drives the use of the plural. In this context, it is used to indicate that there can be multiple limits imposed on a contest such as this. While the use of the plural and singular are both grammatically correct, each has a slightly different connotation.

In general, the choice of plural or singular is driven by expectation. If you were describing an animal with no nose, you wouldn't say that animal has no noses (though it is grammatically correct and quite true) because you would expect it to have one nose. Likewise, you would not say that an animal without eyes has no eye.

In western martial arts matches, there are often multiple time limits. Some boxing matches, for example, might have a three-minute round, a one-minute break, and a total of ten rounds (which is, effectively, a match-length limit). If a contest were fought continuously until submission or death, most English speakers would be likely to say there are no time limits to indicate the expectation that most contests are governed by a variety of time limits.

In sports contests, the singular construction is more likely to be used to describe the absence of an overall match-length limit. Baseball is said to have no time limit. In reality, there is a curfew that can't be exceeded, but it happens so rarely that it is not considered significant.