Plural

Theplural(sometimesabbreviatedaspl.,pl,orPL), in many languages, is one of the values of thegrammatical category of number.The plural of anountypically denotes aquantitygreater than the default quantity represented by that noun. This default quantity is most commonly one (a form that represents this default quantity of one is said to be ofsingularnumber). Therefore, plurals most typically denote two or more of something, although they may also denote fractional, zero or negative amounts. An example of a plural is the English wordcats,which corresponds to the singularcat.

Words of other types, such asverbs,adjectivesandpronouns,also frequently have distinct plural forms, which are used inagreementwith the number of their associated nouns.

Some languages also have adual(denoting exactly two of something) or other systems of number categories. However, inEnglishand many other languages, singular and plural are the only grammatical numbers, except for possible remnants of dual number in pronouns such asbothandeither.

Use in systems of grammatical number

In many languages, there is also adual number(used for indicating two objects). Some other grammatical numbers present in various languages includetrial(for three objects) andpaucal(for an imprecise but small number of objects). In languages with dual, trial, or paucal numbers, plural refers to numbers higher than those. However, numbers besides singular, plural, and (to a lesser extent) dual are extremely rare. Languages withnumerical classifierssuch asChineseandJapaneselack any significant grammatical number at all, though they are likely to have pluralpersonal pronouns.

Some languages (likeMele-Fila) distinguish between a plural and a greater plural. A greater plural refers to an abnormally large number for the object of discussion. The distinction between the paucal, the plural, and the greater plural is often relative to the type of object under discussion. For example, in discussing oranges, the paucal number might imply fewer than ten, whereas for the population of a country, it might be used for a few hundred thousand.

TheAustronesian languagesofSursurungaandLihirhave extremely complex grammatical number systems, with singular, dual, paucal, greater paucal, and plural.

Traces of the dual and paucal can be found in someSlavicandBaltic languages(apart from those that preserve the dual number, such asSlovene). These are known as "pseudo-dual" and "pseudo-paucal" grammatical numbers. For example,PolishandRussianuse different forms of nouns with the numerals 2, 3, or 4 (and higher numbers ending with these) than with the numerals 5, 6, etc. (genitive singular in Russian and nominative plural in Polish in the former case, genitive plural in the latter case). Also some nouns may follow different declension patterns when denoting objects which are typically referred to in pairs. For example, in Polish, the noun "oko",among other meanings, may refer to a human or animaleyeor to a drop of oil on water. The plural of "oko"in the first meaning is"oczy"(even if actually referring to more than two eyes), while in the second it is"oka"(even if actually referring to exactly two drops).

Traces of dual can also be found inModern Hebrew.Biblical Hebrewhad grammatical dual via the suffix-ạyimas opposed to־ים‎-īmformasculine words.Contemporary use of a true dual number in Hebrew is chiefly used in words regarding time and numbers. However, in Biblical and Modern Hebrew, the pseudo-dual as plural of "eyes"עין / עינים‎ʿạyin / ʿēnạyim"eye / eyes" as well as "hands", "legs" and several other words are retained. For further information, seeDual (grammatical number) § Hebrew.

Certain nouns in some languages have the unmarked form referring to multiple items, with an inflected form referring to a single item. These cases are described with the termscollective numberandsingulative number.Some languages may possess amassive pluraland anumerative plural,the first implying a large mass and the second implying division. For example, "the waters of the Atlantic Ocean" versus, "the waters of [each of] the Great Lakes".

Ghil'ad Zuckermannuses the termsuperpluralto refer to massive plural. He argues that the Australian AboriginalBarngarla languagehas four grammatical numbers: singular, dual, plural andsuperplural.For example:

• wárraidya"emu"(singular)
• wárraidyalbili"two emus" (dual)
• wárraidyarri"emus" (plural)
• wárraidyailyarranha"a lot of emus", "heaps of emus" (superplural)

Formation of plurals

A given language may make plural forms of nouns by various types ofinflection,including the addition ofaffixes,like the English-(e)sand-iessuffixes,orablaut,as in the derivation of the pluralgeesefromgoose,or a combination of the two. Some languages may also form plurals byreduplication,but not as productive. It may be that some nouns are not marked for plural, likesheepandseriesin English. In languages which also have acasesystem, such asLatinandRussian,nouns can have not just one plural form but several, corresponding to the various cases. The inflection might affect multiple words, not just the noun; and the noun itself need not become plural as such, other parts of the expression indicate the plurality.

In English, the most common formation of plural nouns is by adding an-ssuffix to the singular noun. (For details and different cases, seeEnglish plurals). Just like in English, noun plurals in French, Spanish and Portuguese are also typically formed by adding an-ssuffix to the lemma form, sometimes combining it with an additional vowel. (In French, however, this plural suffix is often not pronounced.) This construction is also found in German and Dutch, but only in some nouns. Suffixing is cross-linguistically the most common method of forming plurals.

In Welsh, the reference form, or default quantity, of some nouns is plural, and the singular form is formed from that, egllygod,mice;llygoden,mouse;erfin,turnips;erfinen,turnip.

Plural forms of other parts of speech

In many languages, words other than nouns may take plural forms, these being used by way ofgrammatical agreementwith plural nouns (ornoun phrases). Such a word may in fact have a number of plural forms, to allow for simultaneous agreement within other categories such ascase,personandgender,as well as marking of categories belonging to the word itself (such astenseof verbs, degree ofcomparisonof adjectives, etc.)

Verbsoften agree with theirsubjectin number (as well as in person and sometimes gender). Examples of plural forms are theFrenchmangeons, mangez, mangent– respectively the first-, second- and third-person plural of the present tense of the verbmanger.In English a distinction is made in the third person between forms such aseats(singular) andeat(plural).

Adjectivesmay agree with the noun they modify; examples of plural forms are the Frenchpetitsandpetites(the masculine plural and feminine plural respectively ofpetit). The same applies to somedeterminers– examples are the French plural definite articleles,and the Englishdemonstrativestheseandthose.

It is common forpronouns,particularlypersonal pronouns,to have distinct plural forms. Examples in English arewe(us,etc.) andthey(themetc.; seeEnglish personal pronouns), and againtheseandthose(when used asdemonstrative pronouns).

In Welsh, a number of common prepositions also inflect to agree with the number, person, and sometimes gender of the noun or pronoun they govern.

Nouns lacking plural or singular form

Certain nouns do not form plurals. A large class of such nouns in many languages is that ofuncountable nouns,representing mass or abstract concepts such asair,information,physics.However, many nouns of this type also have countable meanings or other contexts in which a plural can be used; for examplewatercan take a plural when it means water from a particular source (different waters make for different beers) and in expressions likeby the waters of Babylon.

Certaincollective nounsdo not have a singular form and exist only in the plural, such as "clothes".

There are also nouns found exclusively or almost exclusively in the plural, such as the Englishscissors.These are referred to with the termplurale tantum.Occasionally, a plural form can pull double duty as the singular form (or vice versa), as has happened withthe word "data".

Usage of the plural

The plural is used, as a rule, for quantities other than one (and other than those quantities represented by other grammatical numbers, such as dual, which a language may possess). Thus it is frequently used with numbers higher than one (two cats,101 dogs,four and a half hours) and for unspecified amounts of countable things (some men,several cakes,how many lumps?,birds have feathers). The precise rules for the use of plurals, however, depends on the language – for exampleRussianuses the genitive singular rather than the plural after certain numbers (see above).

Treatments differ in expressions of zero quantity: English often uses the plural in such expressions asno injuriesandzero points,althoughno(andzeroin some contexts) may also take a singular. In French, the singular form is used afterzéro.

English also tends to use the plural withdecimal fractions,even if less than one, as in0.3 metres,0.9 children.Common fractionsless than one tend to be used with singular expressions:half (of) a loaf,two-thirds of a mile.Negative numbersare usually treated the same as the corresponding positive ones:minus one degree,minus two degrees.Again, rules on such matters differ between languages.

In some languages, including English, expressions that appear to be singular in form may be treated as plural if they are used with a plural sense, as inthe government are agreed.The reverse is also possible:the United States is a powerful country.Seesynesis,and alsoEnglish plural § Singulars as plural and plurals as singular.

POS tagging

Inpart-of-speech taggingnotation, tags are used to distinguish different types of plurals based on their grammatical and semantic context.Resolution varies, for example the Penn-Treebank tagset (~36 tags) has two tags:NNS - noun, plural,andNPS - Proper noun, plural,while the CLAWS 7 tagset (~149 tags)uses six:NN2 - plural common noun, NNL2 - plural locative noun, NNO2 - numeral noun, plural, NNT2 - temporal noun, plural, NNU2 - plural unit of measurement, NP2 - plural proper noun.

See also

• Double plural
• Reduplicated plural
• Partitive plural
• Plural quantification
• Pluractionality
• Pluralis majestatis
• Romance plurals

Further reading

• Corbett, Greville.Number(Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics).Cambridge University Press,2000.
• Huddleston, Rodney and Pullum, Geoffrey K.,The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language,Cambridge University Press, Suffolk, UK, 2002
• Curme, George O.,A Grammar of the English Language, Volume 1: Parts of Speech,D.C. Heath and Company, 1935
• Opdycke, John B.,Harper's English Grammar,Harper & Row, New York, New York, 1965
• Jespersen, Otto,A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles, v. II,George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., London, 1928
• McDavid, Raven I. Jr. et al.,The Plurals of Nouns of Measure in Spoken American English,Fries Festschrift, Ann Arbor, MI, 1963
• Xu, Dan. 2012.Plurality and classifiers across languages in China.Berlin: de Gruyter.

External links

• GNU gettext utilities (section 11.2.6 – Additional functions for plural forms)(Treatment of zero and the plurality based on the final digits)