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In most English varieties, there are five non-sibilant voiceless consonants that occur at the end of words: / p /, / t /, / k /, / f /, and / θ /; some varieties also have / x /. When the singular form ends in a voiceless consonant other than a sibilant, the plural is normally formed by adding / s / (a voiceless sibilant).
There are three plural forms of octopus: octopuses, octopi, and octopodes. A fourth form octopods is occasionally used by scientists for taxonomic purposes. [13] Currently, octopuses is the most common form in the UK as well as the US; octopodes is rare, and octopi is often objected to as incorrect. [14]
Singular forms simply remove the final s or, in the case of -ese endings, are the same as the plural forms. The ending -men has feminine equivalent -women (e.g. Irishman , Scotswoman ). The French terminations -ois / -ais serve as both the singular and plural masculine ; adding e ( -oise / -aise ) makes them singular feminine; es ( -oises ...
In some cases, a zero-morpheme may also be used to contrast with other inflected forms of a word that contain an audible morpheme. For example, the plural noun cats in English consists of the root cat and the plural suffix -s, and so the singular cat may be analyzed as the root inflected with the null singular suffix -∅. [9]
Most nouns in English have distinct singular and plural forms. Nouns and most noun phrases can form a possessive construction. Plurality is most commonly shown by the ending-s (or -es), whereas possession is always shown by the enclitic-'s or, for plural forms ending in s, by just an apostrophe. Consider, for example, the forms of the noun girl.
English nouns form the largest category of words in English, both in the number of different words and how often they are used in typical texts. The three main categories of English nouns are common nouns, proper nouns, and pronouns. A defining feature of English nouns is their ability to inflect for number, as through the plural –s morpheme.
A given language may make plural forms of nouns by various types of inflection, including the addition of affixes, like the English -(e)s and -ies suffixes, or ablaut, as in the derivation of the plural geese from goose, or a combination of the two. Some languages may also form plurals by reduplication, but not as productively
The forms with a z are normally added to words that end in stressed vowels, such as café → cafezinho. Some nouns have slightly irregular diminutives. Some nouns have slightly irregular diminutives.