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For example, in Spanish, nouns composed of a verb and its plural object usually have the verb first and noun object last (e.g. the legendary monster chupacabras, literally "sucks-goats", or in a more natural English formation "goatsucker") and the plural form of the object noun is retained in both the singular and plural forms of the compound ...
In British English (BrE), collective nouns can take either singular (formal agreement) or plural (notional agreement) verb forms, according to whether the emphasis is on the body as a whole or on the individual members respectively; compare a committee was appointed with the committee were unable to agree.
There are three plural forms of octopus: octopuses, octopi, and octopodes. A fourth form octopods is occasionally used by scientists for taxonomic purposes. [13] Currently, octopuses is the most common form in the UK as well as the US; octopodes is rare, and octopi is often objected to as incorrect. [14]
A given language may make plural forms of nouns by various types of inflection, including the addition of affixes, like the English -(e)s and -ies suffixes, or ablaut, as in the derivation of the plural geese from goose, or a combination of the two.
Singular and plural forms are marked from the general form. The general is used when the specific number is deemed irrelevant or unimportant. In this system, the singular is often called the singulative, to distinguish it as derived from a different form. Similarly, the plural derived from the general has been called the plurative. [195]
Irregularly, English nouns are marked as plural in other ways, often inheriting the plural morphology of older forms of English or the languages that they are borrowed from. Plural forms from Old English resulted from vowel mutation (e.g., foot/feet), adding –en (e.g., ox/oxen), or making no change at all (e.g., this sheep/those sheep).
Similarly, the participle agrees with the subject when it is used with ser to form the "true" passive voice (e.g. La carta fue escrita ayer 'The letter was written [got written] yesterday.'), and also when it is used with estar to form a "passive of result", or stative passive (as in La carta ya está escrita 'The letter is already written.').
Moreover, their plural forms are truly unique: the genitive plural always ends in -ra, which is normally used for adjectives, and the nominative/accusative plural varies between no ending, the adjective ending -e, and the a-stem ending -as. The adjectival endings are a relic of the nd-stems' origin as present participles.