Plural, commonly abbreviated pl., is a grammatical number, typically referring to more than one of the referent in the real world. In the English language, singular and plural are the only grammatical numbers.
English
Main article:
English pluralIn English, the plural is usually formed with the addition of -s (e.g. one cat, two cats; one chair, two chairs) or -es (e.g. one bush, two bushes; one itch, two itches). Generally, -s is added to all nouns that end in a voiceless consonant, vowels, or voiced non-sibilants, whereas -es is added for nouns ending in a sibilant sound. Nouns that end in e are a noted exception; though e may form a sibilant sound, -s is used in these cases: e.g. one tree, two trees; one bee, two bees.
Some plural forms require more noticeable changes in word structure. Most words ending in y are pluralised with ies: e.g. one lady, two ladies; one cherry, two cherries. Some words ending in f are pluralised with -ves: e.g. one leaf; two leaves; one roof; two rooves. Words ending in x are often pluralised with -ces: e.g. one matrix, two matrices; one index, two indices. Words ending in us often replace the us with -i: e.g. one cactus, two cacti; one fungus, two fungi. A subset of words ending in um or on are pluralised by replacing with -a: e.g. one forum, two fora; one criterion, two criteria. See English plural#Irregular plurals for more examples of irregular pluralisation.
A small class of words have identical singular and plural forms: e.g. one sheep, two sheep; one aircraft, two aircraft.
Other languages
In many languages, there is also a dual number (used for indicating two objects). Some other grammatical numbers present in various languages include trial (for three objects) and paucal (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 with measure words such as Chinese and Japanese lack any significant grammatical number at all, though they are likely to have plural personal pronouns.
Some languages (like Mele-Fila) distinguish between a plural and a greater plural. A greater plural refers to an abnormally large number for the object of discussion. It should also be noted that 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.
The Austronesian languages of Sursurunga and Lihir have singular, dual, paucal, greater paucal, and plural. Such languages as these have the most complex grammatical number in the world.
Zero
Languages having only a singular and plural form may still differ in their treatment of zero. For example, in English, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, the plural form is used for zero or more than one, and the singular for one thing only. By contrast, in French, the singular form is used for zero.
An interesting difference from Romance/Germanic languages is found in some Slavic and Baltic languages. Here, the final digits of the number determine its form. Though most of the modern Slavic languages lack dual form, they do have traces of dual form. For example, Polish has singular and plural, and a special form (paucal) for numbers where the last digit is 2, 3 or 4, (excluding endings of 12, 13 and 14). Russian uses plural form of words ending like genitive singular form for numbers from 2 to 4 and genitive plural form of words for numbers more than 4. In addition, Slovene preserved pure dual, using it for numbers ending in 2. In Serbo-Croatian (in addition to the paucal for numbers 2–4), several nouns have alternate forms for counting plural and collective plural (the latter being treated as a collective noun). For example, there are two ways to say leaves: lišće (collective) is used in "Leaves are falling from the trees", but listovi (counting) is used in "Those are some beautiful leaves". Old Church Slavonic (also known as Old Slavic), which is close to Proto-Slavic, had dual form not only for nouns, but also for verbs, almost like Sanskrit. Latin, though high inflectional and close to Proto-Indo-European, lacks dual form and some say that the ancestor of the Italic languages or even of Italic and Celtic languages had lost it. Latin still has some traces of dual form. For example, the word duo (two), has one form for masculine and neuter words (duo), and another form for feminine (duae, like in Russian), the word for three has two forms: tres for masculine and feminine words and tria for neuter, while for example, quotior, quinque, etc., have only one. The word diviginti (twenty) is different from other words with -vigint-, for example, triginta.
Instances
In English, mass nouns and abstract nouns have plurals in less common instances. The phrase "by the waters of Babylon" is merely poetic, but the mass noun "water" takes a plural to signify the water drawn from different sources, with different trace minerals, as in the phrase "Different waters make for different beers." Similarly, the abstract noun "physics" is usually a vast unitary concept, but in its recent meaning of computer game subroutines, a plural sense is possible for different workings of physics, though without a change in inflection: "Throughout the history of the game series, the physics have improved."
See also
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