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Examples are stewardi (supposed plural of stewardess) and Elvi (as a plural for Elvis imitators). The Toyota corporation has determined that their Prius model should have the plural form Prii, even though the Latin word prius has a plural priora, the Lada Priora having prior claim to that name—though the common plural is "Priuses".
This may be exemplified in English by the plural of octopus. This is a Greek borrowed word, and so should take a plural form octopodes. However, English has many nouns of Latin origin with singular forms ending -us and plural forms ending -i, such as cactus/cacti, radius/radii, etc. Thus, an analogical proportion can be established:
If the latter meaning is intended, the word (though singular in form) may be treated as if it were a plural, in that it may take a plural verb and be replaced with a plural pronoun: (in British English) the government are considering their position (alternatively the government is considering its position).
Singular denotes exactly one referent, while plural denotes more than one referent. For example, in English: [7] dog (singular, one) dogs (plural, two or more) To mark number, English has different singular and plural forms for nouns and verbs (in the third person): "my dog watches television" (singular) and "my dogs watch television" (plural). [7]
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.
An example of a plural is the English word boys, which corresponds to the singular boy. Words of other types, such as verbs , adjectives and pronouns , also frequently have distinct plural forms, which are used in agreement with the number of their associated nouns.
See English plural § Singulars with collective meaning treated as plural. English nouns are not marked for case as they are in some languages, but they have possessive forms, through the addition of -'s (as in John's, children's) or just an apostrophe (with no change in pronunciation) in the case of -[e]s plurals (the dogs' owners) and ...
The plural morpheme for regular nouns in English is typically realized by adding an -s or -es to the end of the noun. However, the plural morpheme actually has three different allomorphs: [-s], [-z], and [-əz]. The specific pronunciation that a plural morpheme takes on is determined by a set of morphological rules such as the following: [2]