Where a singular noun ends in a sibilant sound, the plural is formed by adding /ɪz/ or /əz/ (in some transcription systems, this is abbreviated as /ᵻz/). In English, there are six sibilant consonants, namely /s z ʃ ʒ tʃ dʒ/. Regular English plurals fall into three classes, depending upon the sound that ends the singular form: The plural morpheme in English is a sibilant suffixed to the end of most nouns. This less-than aspect can be seen in cases like the temperature is zero degrees (not * zero degree) and 0.5 children per woman (not * 0.5 child per woman). In other words, plural means not just "more than one" but also "less than one (except minus one)". In the English system of grammatical number, singular means "one (or minus one)", and plural means "not singular". For more information, see English phonology.Īlthough the everyday meaning of plural is "more than one", the grammatical term has a slightly different technical meaning. Phonological transcriptions provided in this article are for Received Pronunciation and General American. For plurals of pronouns, see English personal pronouns. This article discusses the variety of ways in which English plural nouns are formed from the corresponding singular forms, as well as various issues concerning the usage of singulars and plurals in English.
For the distinction between, / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.Įnglish nouns are inflected for grammatical number, meaning that, if they are of the countable type, they generally have different forms for singular and plural. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).
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