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Welsh has two systems of grammatical number, singular–plural and collective–singulative. Since the loss of the noun inflection system of earlier Celtic, plurals have become unpredictable and can be formed in several ways: by adding a suffix to the end of the word (most commonly -au), as in tad "father" and tadau "fathers", through vowel affection, as in bachgen "boy" and bechgyn "boys", or ...
The dummy subject takes the number (singular or plural) of the logical subject (complement), hence it takes a plural verb if the complement is plural. In informal English, however, the contraction there's is often used for both singular and plural.
Verbs are then said to agree with their subjects (resp. objects). Many English verbs exhibit subject agreement of the following sort: whereas I go, you go, we go, they go are all grammatical in standard English, he go is not (except in the subjunctive, as "They requested that he go with them").
As an example, consider the English sentences below: That apple on the table is fresh. Those two apples on the table are fresh. The quantity of apples is marked on the noun—"apple" singular number (one item) vs. "apples" plural number (more than one item)—on the demonstrative, that/those, and on the verb, is/are.
For example, translating the aforementioned example into Latin: Iūlia dīcit sē bonam discipulam esse. literally: 'Julia says herself to be a good student.' Sē here is an accusative reflexive pronoun referring back to the subject of the main verb i.e. Iūlia ; esse is the infinitive "to be."
An example of a Russian case inflection is given below (with explicit stress marks), using the singular forms of the Russian term for "sailor", which belongs to Russian's first declension class. моря́к ( nominative ) "[the] sailor" [as a subject] (e.g. Там стоит моряк : The sailor is standing there)
The stereotypical subject immediately precedes the finite verb in declarative sentences and represents an agent or a theme. The subject is often a multi-word constituent and should be distinguished from parts of speech, which, roughly, classify words within constituents. In the example sentences below, the subjects are indicated in boldface.
A transitive form exists in AmE, with a different meaning: to catch somebody up means that the subject will help the object catch up, rather the opposite of the BrE transitive meaning. cater ("to provide food and service"): Intransitive in BrE, transitive or intransitive in AmE (to cater for a banquet/to cater a banquet).