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English plurals include the plural forms of English nouns and English determiners. This article discusses the variety of ways in which English plurals are formed from the corresponding singular forms, as well as various issues concerning the usage of singulars and plurals in English.
In the English sentence above, the plural suffix -s is added to the noun cowboy. In the equivalent in Western Apache, a head-marking language, a plural affix da-is added to the verb yiłch'ígó'aah "he is teaching him", resulting in yiłch'ídagó'aah "he is teaching them" while noun idilohí "cowboy" is unmarked for number.
In English, the most common formation of plural nouns is by adding an -s suffix to the singular noun. (For details and different cases, see English plurals.) Just like in English, noun plurals in French, Spanish, and Portuguese are also typically formed by adding an -s suffix to the lemma form, sometimes combining it with an additional vowel ...
Although English pronouns can have subject and object forms (he/him, she/her), nouns show only a singular/plural and a possessive/non-possessive distinction (e.g. chair, chairs, chair's, chairs'); there is no manifest difference in the form of chair between "The chair is here." (subject) and "I own the chair."
(Note: the case in Slavic languages termed the "locative case" in English is actually a prepositional case.) Pergressive case: vicinity: in the vicinity of the house Kamu: Pertingent case: contacting: touching the house Tlingit | Archi: Postessive case: posterior: after the house Lezgian | Agul: Subessive case: under: under/below the house Tsez ...
Language Present infinitive Present indicative Singular persons Plural persons 1st 2nd 3rd 1st 2nd 3rd Germanic Proto-Germanic *wesaną *immi *izi *isti *izum *izud *sindi Anglo-Saxon wesan: eom eart is sind sindon English be: am are art 1 be'st 1: is are 11: are German sein: bin bist ist sind seid sind Yiddish transliterated: זיין zayn ...
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.
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).