mascplural

Mascplural is a term used in linguistics and computational linguistics to denote the combination of masculine gender and plural number for a word form or a grammatical category. It serves as a label in morphological tagging and grammar rules to indicate that a lexeme or its agreeing elements are both masculine and plural. In annotation schemes such as Universal Dependencies or other part-of-speech frameworks, features like Gender=Masc and Number=Plur may be combined to express mascplural.

In languages with grammatical gender, masculine plural forms appear on nouns, determiners, adjectives, and sometimes pronouns to mark a group that is masculine, or a mixed-gender group treated as masculine in agreement. The actual surface form varies by language. For example, in Spanish, masculine plural nouns typically end in -os and adjectives in -os (e.g., niño -> niños; niños altos). In French, the masculine plural commonly ends with -s in both nouns and adjectives (e.g., chien -> chiens; beaux chiens), though the definite article les covers both genders in plural.

Notes and considerations: mascplural is a descriptive feature used in linguistic analysis and NLP rather than a separate word class. Some languages distinguish masculine plural for animate versus inanimate groups, or treat mixed-gender groups differently in certain contexts. The presence of mascplural in a grammar or tag set requires accompanying information about the language's agreement rules, case (if applicable), and potential animacy distinctions.

See also: gender, number, grammatical agreement, masculine, feminine, plural.