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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. For plurals of pronouns, see English personal pronouns.
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.
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 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.
Most Prescriptivists consider these forms incorrect, but descriptivists may simply describe them as a natural evolution of language; some prescriptivists do consider some such forms correct (e.g. octopi as the plural of octopus being analogous to polypi as the plural of polypus). Some English words of Latin origin do not commonly take the Latin ...
English grammar is the set of structural rules of the English language. ... hence it takes a plural verb if the complement is plural. In informal English, ...