Flertalsformer

Flertalsformer, or plural forms, are the inflected forms that indicate more than one reference in a language. They can apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives and sometimes verbs, and they are a central aspect of morphology and grammar. Plural forms signal quantity and often interact with other grammatical categories such as case, gender, or definiteness.

Plural formation uses several common methods. Suffixation adds a dedicated ending, for example -s or -es in English. Some languages use internal vowel changes, known as ablaut, to mark plurality. Others rely on suppletion, where a completely different stem is used in the plural. Some languages have a zero plural, where the same form is used for singular and plural.

In English, plural forms include regular plurals like cat → cats and bus → buses, as well as irregular plurals such as man → men or mouse → mice. There are also zero plurals, as with sheep or species. Other languages show more complex patterns. German nouns may take endings like -e, -en, or -er and may change the article; Swedish uses endings such as -ar, -er, -or, or -n and may feature definiteness in the plural (pojkar → pojkarna).

Plural systems vary widely across language families. Some require adjectives and determiners to agree in number with the noun; others mark plurality primarily on the noun, and still others encode plurality through word order or articles. Studying flertalsformer helps illuminate how languages encode quantity, agreement, and syntactic structure.