singularformerna

Singularformerna is a linguistic term that refers to the set of inflected forms that express singular number for a word (lexeme) in a language. They are the counterpart to pluralformerna, which encode plural. In many languages, the singular forms appear for nouns, pronouns, adjectives and, in some systems, verbs when marking agreement with a singular subject or other grammatical categories such as case or definiteness.

In practice, singularformerna are the forms a word takes when it denotes a single item or entity. For nouns, this often includes a basic singular form and, in languages with articles or adjectives that agree with number, corresponding singular forms used with definite or other grammatical contexts. For example in Swedish, the noun pojke has the indefinite singular form pojke and the definite singular form pojken; in the plural, the forms are pojkar (indefinite plural) and pojkarna (definite plural). Adjectives that modify a singular noun may also have a distinct form to agree with the noun’s number and definiteness.

The study of singularformer is central to inflectional morphology and syntax. It explains how pronouns, adjectives and verbs align with the noun they relate to, as well as how word forms change in response to syntactic function, case or definiteness. Some languages have highly productive, regular singular forms, while others exhibit irregularities and exceptions in their singular paradigms. Cross-linguistically, the exact set and pattern of singularformerna vary, but each language uses them to convey precise grammatical information about number and agreement.