Abstract: This paper discusses the incompatibility of plural marker “men” with numerals in Chinese from a cross-linguistic perspective between Chinese and English. It comes to a conclusion that “men” is both an addictive plural marker and an associative plural marker. As an addictive plural marker, noun phrases plus “men” doesn’t refer to atomic members and is consequently incompatible with a numeral which signifies an exact number. When “men” is an associative plural marker, the heterogeneity between members in the set it refers to causes the failure of counting due to the fact that counting is based on homogeneity. In contrast, English plural marker “-s” entails general numbers including singulars and plurals so that it is compatible with numbers. While “-s” implies both singulars and plurals, “men” is a real plural marker which exclusively refers to plurals.

Key words: addictive plural丨associative plural丨general number丨&ldquo, men&rdquo, 丨&ldquo, -s&rdquo