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The plural may be used to emphasise the plurality of the attribute, especially in British English but very rarely in American English: a careers advisor, a languages expert. The plural is also more common with irregular plurals for various attributions: women killers are women who kill, whereas woman killers are those who kill women.
The irregular form tends to indicate duration, whereas the regular form often describes a short-term action (The fire burned for weeks. vs. He burnt his finger. ), and in American English, the regular form is associated with the literal sense of a verb, while the irregular form with a figurative one.
Full knowledge of these plurals can come only with extended exposure to the Arabic language, though a few rules can be noted. One study computed the probability that the pattern of vowels in the singular would predict the pattern in the broken plural (or vice versa) and found values ranging from 20% to 100% for different patterns.
The plural form of a noun is usually created by adding the suffix-(e)s. The pronouns have irregular plurals, as in "I" versus "we", because they are ancient and frequently used words going back to when English had a well developed system of declension. English verbs distinguish singular from plural number in the third person present tense ("He ...
Nearly all of the basic irregular verbs are single-syllable words. Their irregular inflected forms are generally single-syllable also, except for the past participles in -en like chosen and risen. However, many additional irregular verbs are formed by adding prefixes to the basic ones: understand from stand, become from come, mistake from take ...
Therefore, plurals most typically denote two or more of something, although they may also denote fractional, zero or negative amounts. An example of a plural is the English word boys, which corresponds to the singular boy.
Examples are stewardi (supposed plural of stewardess) and Elvi (as a plural for Elvis imitators). The Toyota corporation has determined that their Prius model should have the plural form Prii, even though the Latin word prius has a plural priora, the Lada Priora having prior claim to that name—though the common plural is "Priuses".
Countable nouns generally have singular and plural forms. [4] In most cases the plural is formed from the singular by adding -[e]s (as in dogs, bushes), although there are also irregular forms (woman/women, foot/feet), including cases where the two forms are identical (sheep, series). For more details see English plural.