Plural

In many languages, a plural is a special form of words that shows there is more than one of something. It is one of the ways languages talk about the number of things. For example, in English, the word boys is the plural form of the word boy. This means there is more than one boy.

Usually, the default number for a noun is one, which is called singular. Plurals tell us when we are talking about two or more of that thing.

Words that are not nouns, like verbs, adjectives, and pronouns, also often change their form to match whether they are talking about one thing or many things. This matching is called agreement.

Use in systems of grammatical number

In many languages, we use the singular to talk about one thing. The plural form shows when we mean more than one. Some languages have special forms for two, three, or a small number of things. The plural is used for numbers higher than these.

Some languages, like Chinese and Japanese, don’t use plural forms much but might still have them for pronouns. Certain languages can even distinguish between a normal plural and a very large plural. For example, when talking about oranges, a small number might be fewer than ten, but for a country’s population, it could mean a few hundred thousand.

Formation of plurals

Languages have different ways to show when a noun is more than one. In English, we usually add -s to the end of a word to make it plural, like “cat” becomes “cats.” Some words change in other ways, like “goose” becomes “geese.”

Other languages also add endings to make plurals. For example, in French, Spanish, and Portuguese, adding -s is common too. In Welsh, some nouns start as plurals, and we change them to make a single item, like “llygod” (mice) becomes “llygoden” (mouse).

Plural forms of other parts of speech

In many languages, words that are not nouns can also have plural forms. These forms match the plural nouns they are used with.

For example, verbs often change to match the number of their subject. In French, the verb manger (to eat) has different forms for "we eat," "you all eat," and "they eat."

Adjectives and some determiners also change to match the nouns they describe. In French, the adjective petit (small) becomes petits for masculine nouns and petites for feminine nouns when they are plural. Pronouns, like we and they in English, also have special plural forms.

Nouns lacking plural or singular form

Some nouns do not have plural forms. These include uncountable nouns, which describe things that cannot be counted, like air or information.

Other nouns only exist in plural form and do not have a singular version. An example is the word "clothes". There are also nouns that are almost always used in plural form, like "scissors". These are called plurale tantum. Sometimes, a plural form can also be used as a singular form, like the word "data".

Usage of the plural

The plural form is used when we talk about more than one of something. For example, we say "two cats" or "101 dogs" to show there is more than one. We also use the plural when we talk about unknown amounts, like "some men" or "several cakes."

Different languages have different rules for using plurals. In English, we sometimes use the plural even when talking about zero things, like "no injuries." But in French, they often use the singular form after the word "zéro." English also uses plurals with decimal numbers, such as "0.3 metres," but uses singular forms with common fractions, like "half a loaf." Rules about these details change depending on the language.

Sometimes, words that look singular can act plural, like in "the government are agreed." The opposite can also happen, like in "the United States is a powerful country."
Russian
decimal fractions
Common fractions
Negative numbers
synesis
English plural § Singulars as plural and plurals as singular

POS tagging

In part-of-speech tagging, different tags help us see plurals by how they are used in sentences. For example, the Penn-Treebank tagset uses two tags for plurals, and the CLAWS 7 tagset uses six tags to describe kinds of plural nouns.