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In linguistics plurality or a plural is a concept of quantity (i.e. grammatical number) representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns a plural word or marker (morpheme) is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun which is typically one. Plurality is a linguistic universal represented variously among the languages as a separate word (free morpheme) an affix (bound morpheme) or by other morphological indications such as stress or implicit markers/context.

In the English language singular and plural are the only usual grammatical numbers with minor dual exceptions ("both" "twice" "either" etc.)

A plural is commonly abbreviated pl. in dictionaries. In part-of-speech tagging it has other notation which distinguish different types of plurals based on the grammatical and semantic context. Contents 1 English 2 Other languages 3 Abbreviations 4 Zero 5 Instances 6 POS tagging 7 See also 8 References English Main article: English plural

In English the plural is usually formed with the addition of -s (e.g. one cat two cats; one chair two chairs) or -es (e.g. one bush two bushes; one itch two itches). Generally -s is added to all nouns that end in a voiceless consonant vowels or voiced non-sibilants whereas -es is added for nouns ending in a sibilant sound. Nouns that end in e are a noted exception; though e may form a sibilant sound -s is used (e.g.. one tree two trees; one bee two bees).

Some plural forms require more noticeable changes in word structure. Most words ending in y are pluralised with ies (e.g. one lady two ladies; one cherry two cherries). Some words ending in f are pluralised with -ves (e.g. one leaf; two leaves; exception: one roof; two roofs). Words ending in x are often pluralised with -ces (e.g. one matrix two matrices; one index two indices). Words ending in us often replace the us with -i (e.g. one cactus two cacti; one fungus two fungi). A subset of words ending in um or on are pluralised by replacing with -a (e.g. one forum two fora; one criterion two criteria). See English plural#Irregular plurals for more examples of irregular pluralisation.

A small class of words have identical singular and plural forms: e.g. one sheep two sheep; one aircraft two aircraft. Other languages

In many languages there is also a dual number (used for indicating two objects). Some other grammatical numbers present in various languages include trial (for three objects) and paucal (for an imprecise but small number of objects). In languages with dual trial or paucal numbers plural refers to numbers higher than those. However numbers besides singular plural and (to a lesser extent) dual are extremely rare. Languages with measure words such as Chinese and Japanese lack any significant grammatical number at all though they are likely to have plural personal pronouns.

Some languages (like Mele-Fila) distinguish between a plural and a greater plural. A greater plural refers to an abnormally large number for the object of discussion. It should also be noted that the distinction between the paucal the plural and the greater plural is often relative to the type of object under discussion. For example in discussing oranges the paucal number might imply fewer than ten whereas for the population of a country it might be used for a few hundred thousand.

The Austronesian languages of Sursurunga and Lihir have singular dual paucal greater paucal and plural. Such languages as these have the most complex grammatical number in the world. Abbreviations To form the plural of an abbreviation a number or a capital letter used as a noun simply add a lowercase s to the end. A group of MPs The roaring '20s Mind your Ps and Qs To indicate the plural of the abbreviation of a unit of measure the same form is used as in the singular. 1 lb. or 20 lb. 1 ft. or 16 ft. 1 min. or 45 min. When an abbreviation contains more than one full point Hart's Rules recommends to put the s after the final one. Ph.D.s M.Phil.s the d.t.s However subject to any house style or consistency requirement the same plurals may be rendered less formally as: PhDs MPhils the DTs. (This is the recommended form in the New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors.) According to Hart's Rules an apostrophe may be used in rare cases where clarity calls for it for example when letters or symbols are referred to as objects. The x's of the equation Dot the i's and cross the t's However the apostrophe can be dispensed with if the items are set in italics or quotes: The xs of the equation Dot the 'i's and cross the 't's In Latin and continuing to the derivative forms in European languages as well as English single-letter abbreviations had the plural being a doubling of the letter for note-taking. Most of these deal with writing and publishing. A few longer abbreviations use this as well. Singular abbreviation Singular Word Plural abbreviation Plural Word Discipline d. didot dd. didots typography f. following line or page ff. following lines or pages notes h. hand hh. hands horse height l. line ll. lines notes MS manuscript MSS manuscripts notes op. opus opp. opera notes p. page pp. pages notes P. pope PP. popes s. (or ) section ss. (or ) sections notes v. volume vv. volumes notes Zero Languages having only a singular and plural form may still differ in their treatment of zero. For example in English German Dutch Italian Spanish and Portuguese the plural form is used for zero or more than one and the singular for one thing only. By contrast in French the singular form is used for zero. An interesting difference from Romance/Germanic languages is found in some Slavic and Baltic languages. Here the final digits of the number determine its form. Though most of the modern Slavic languages lack dual form they do have traces of dual form. For example Polish has singular and plural and a special form (paucal) for numbers where the last digit is 2 3 or 4 (excluding endings of 12 13 and 14). Russian uses plural form of words ending like genitive singular form for numbers where the last digit is 2-4 (but not endings of 12 13 and 14) and genitive plural form of words for all other numbers. In addition Slovene preserved pure dual using it for numbers ending in 2. In Serbo-Croatian (in addition to the paucal for numbers 24) several nouns have alternate forms for counting plural and collective plural (the latter being treated as a collective noun). For example there are two ways to say leaves: lie (collective) is used in "Leaves are falling from the trees" but listovi (counting) is used in "Those are some beautiful leaves". Old Church Slavonic (also known as Old Slavic) which is close to Proto-Slavic had dual form not only for nouns but also for verbs almost like Sanskrit. Latin though high inflectional and close to Proto-Indo-European lacks dual form and some say that the ancestor of the Italic languages or even of Italic and Celtic languages had lost it. Instances In English mass nouns and abstract nouns have plurals in less common instances. The phrase by the waters of Babylon is merely poetic but the mass noun water takes a plural to signify the water drawn from different sources with different trace minerals as in the phrase: Different waters make for different beers. Similarly the abstract noun physics is usually a vast unitary concept but in its recent meaning of computer game subroutines a plural sense is possible for different workings of physics though without a change in inflection: Throughout the history of the game series the physics have improved. POS tagging In part-of-speech tagging it has other notation which distinguish different types of plurals based on the grammatical and semantic context. Resolution varies for example the Penn-Treebank tagset (36 tags) has two tags: NNS - noun plural and NPS - Proper noun plural1 while the CLAWS 7 tagset (149 tags)2 uses six: NN2 - plural common noun NNL2 - plural locative noun NNO2 - numeral noun plural NNT2 - temporal noun plural NNU2 - plural unit of measurement NP2 - plural proper noun. See also Collective number Dual (grammatical number) English plural Grammatical number Plurale tantum Pluralis majestatis Romance plurals Pluractionality Partitive plural References http://www.ims.uni-stuttgart.de/projekte/CorpusWorkbench/CQP-HTMLDemo/PennTreebankTS.html/ http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/claws7tags.html Corbett Greville. Number (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics). Cambridge University Press 2000. GNU gettext utilities (section 11.2.6 - Additional functions for plural forms) (Treatment of zero and the plurality based on the final digits)