plurliknande

Plurliknande is a Swedish adjective meaning plural-like. It is used in linguistics and language description to designate forms, constructions, or referents that resemble plural in form or behavior but do not strictly meet standard plural criteria. The term combines the root relating to plurality with liknande, meaning similar or resembling, signaling a likeness to plural through morphology, syntax, or semantics.

In practice, plurliknande descriptions occur in analyses of morphological agreement, numeral systems, or determiner usage where a form typically associated with plural appears in contexts where the referent is not clearly plural, or where a plural form expresses collective or distributive meanings. It may also describe cross-linguistic patterns in which a plural-like marking coexists with singular semantics or where a marker traditionally linked to plurality extends to multiple referents treated as a unit.

The concept is descriptive and primarily used in linguistic research and language pedagogy to discuss patterns that are not fully captured by traditional binary categories of singular versus plural. It is distinguished from pluralia tantum, where a noun is inherently plural in number, and from genuine plural agreement when the reference clearly involves multiple entities.

See also: plural, pluralia tantum, collective noun, number (linguistics), grammatical number.