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The plural of individual letters is usually written with -'s: [22] there are two h's in this sentence; mind your p's and q's; dot the i's and cross the t's. Some people extend this use of the apostrophe to other cases, such as plurals of numbers written in figures (e.g. "1990's"), words used as terms (e.g. "his writing uses a lot of but's").
Pronoun (antōnymíā): a part of speech substitutable for a noun and marked for a person; Preposition (próthesis): a part of speech placed before other words in composition and in syntax; Adverb (epírrhēma): a part of speech without inflection, in modification of or in addition to a verb, adjective, clause, sentence, or other adverb
The dummy subject takes the number (singular or plural) of the logical subject (complement), hence it takes a plural verb if the complement is plural. In informal English, however, the contraction there's is often used for both singular and plural.
In the possessive noun forms of Northern Sámi, the possessor can be in the dual number, but the noun possessed can only be singular or plural. [25] Pronouns are the only part of speech with a dual form in some Polynesian languages, including Samoan, [26] Tuvaluan, [27] [a] and Māori. [29]
Proper nouns that are plural in form take a plural verb in both AmE and BrE; for example, The Beatles are a well-known band; The Diamondbacks are the champions, with one major exception: in American English, the United States is almost universally used with a singular verb.
A fully revealed grammar, which describes the grammatical constructions of a particular speech type in great detail is called descriptive grammar. This kind of linguistic description contrasts with linguistic prescription , a plan to marginalize some constructions while codifying others, either absolutely or in the framework of a standard ...
A major sentence is a regular sentence; it has a subject and a predicate, e.g. "I have a ball." In this sentence, one can change the persons, e.g. "We have a ball." However, a minor sentence is an irregular type of sentence that does not contain a main clause, e.g. "Mary!", "Precisely so.", "Next Tuesday evening after it gets dark."
The parts of speech are an important element of traditional grammars, since patterns of inflection and rules of syntax each depend on a word's part of speech. [12]Although systems vary somewhat, typically traditional grammars name eight parts of speech: nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections.