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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).
In some languages, including English, expressions that appear to be singular in form may be treated as plural if they are used with a plural sense, as in the government are agreed. The reverse is also possible: the United States is a powerful country. See synesis, and also English plural § Singulars as plural and plurals as singular.
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]
In American English (AmE), collective nouns are almost always singular in construction: the committee was unable to agree. However, when a speaker wishes to emphasize that the individuals are acting separately, a plural pronoun may be employed with a singular or plural verb: the team takes their seats, rather than the team takes its seats.
A wider meaning of 'fabric, structure' is found in classical Latin, but not in Greek usage. This meaning is found in late medieval French, and is adopted from the French into English in the mid-16th century. In the 17th century, the word machine could also mean a scheme or plot, a meaning now expressed by the derived machination.
Fowler's Modern English Usage states that "the only acceptable plural in English is octopuses," and that octopi is misconceived and octopodes pedantic. [18] The term octopod (plural octopods) is taken from the taxonomic order Octopoda but has no classical equivalent. The collective form octopus is usually reserved for animals consumed as food.
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).
In morphology and lexicography, a lemma (pl.: lemmas or lemmata) is the canonical form, [1] dictionary form, or citation form of a set of word forms. [2] In English, for example, break , breaks , broke , broken and breaking are forms of the same lexeme , with break as the lemma by which they are indexed.