In the English as in most but not all languages (i.e. Chinese) number can be extracted from the noun leaving a lexical-propositional form of the noun. From book and books we get object predicate: 1.

Nouns are words that name people, places or things. For example, ‘man’ and ‘kitchen’ are nouns. One word is naming a person and the other is naming a place. ‘Cake’ is another example. Frank is baking ...

Baltimore Sun copy editor extraordinaire John McIntyre uses the term “dog-whistle editing” to refer to tiny editing issues that only copy editors notice (and perhaps only copy editors care about).