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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.
It also has two past tense forms: was, which is pronounced with an /ə/ sound in US English, for the first and third persons singular, and were, which is pronounced with an /ə/ sound, for the plural and second person singular (although there are certain subjunctive uses in which were can substitute for was, as in "If I were you…" or "I wish ...
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 ...
The plural verb forms are often used in British English with the singular forms of these countable nouns (e.g., "The team have finished the project."). Conversely, in the English language as a whole, singular verb forms can often be used with nouns ending in "-s" that were once considered plural (e.g., "Physics is my
In Hopi, dual nouns as subjects take the suffix -vit and singular verbs. Hopi does not have dual pronouns, but the plural pronouns may be used with singular verbs with a dual meaning. However, it is not clear if this is pluractionality or simply number agreement on the verb. See Hopi language for details.
The right-hand column notes whether the verb is weak or strong and whether it belongs to a subclass, and links to descriptions elsewhere. Information about the development of these verbs generally can be found at English irregular verbs; details of the etymology and usage of specific verbs can be found by consulting Wiktionary.
The spelling rules given above are also very similar to those for the plural of nouns. The third person singular present of have is irregular: has /hæz/ (with the weak form /həz/ when used as an auxiliary, also contractable to -'s). The verbs do and say also have irregular forms, does /dʌz/ and says /sɛz/, which however look like regular ...
Latin has different singular and plural forms for nouns, verbs, and adjectives, in contrast to English where adjectives do not change for number. [10] Tundra Nenets can mark singular and plural on nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and postpositions. [11] However, the most common part of speech to show a number distinction is pronouns.