vienaskaitos

Vienaskaitos is the grammatical category of number that marks a single entity. In Lithuanian linguistics, vienaskaita (singular) contrasts with daugiskaita (plural). The category governs agreement across parts of speech, including nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numerals and verb forms in finite conjugations.

In nouns, vienaskaita frames the base form in the nominative singular, while many nouns also change in other cases. For example, stalas means a single table in the nominative singular, whereas stalai is the nominative plural. Adjectives agree with the noun in number: geras stalas becomes geri stalai in the plural. Pronouns and numerals likewise reflect number, such as aš for first-person singular and mes for first-person plural.

Verbs show number in their finite forms. For instance, aš einu (I go) uses the singular, while mes einame (we go) uses the plural. The vienaskaitos vs daugiskaitos distinction is thus central to sentence structure, ensuring subject-verb and modifier agreement.

Beyond Lithuanian, many languages encode singular and plural as a basic grammatical contrast, though some have additional numbers or no explicit number in certain forms. In linguistic analysis, vienaskaitos formos refers to the singular forms of a word across its inflectional paradigm, while dauiskaitos formos refer to its plural forms. Overall, vienaskaitos is a foundational concept for understanding how languages mark one versus more than one.