yousingular

Yousingular is a linguistic term used to describe a theoretical category of second-person pronoun systems in which the second-person form is used for both singular and plural reference, with little or no overt number marking on the verb. The term blends "you" and "singular" and is employed in typological discussions to examine how languages mediate number in the second person. It is not tied to a single language or stage of a language, but rather provides a framework for comparing pronoun behavior across languages that converge on a single second-person form or rely on context rather than morphology to signal number.

In practice, yousingular analyses accommodate languages with invariant second-person agreement and with pronouns that do not distinguish singular from plural, as well as dialects that promote one form for both numbers through clitics or particles. English often serves as a contemporary example, where the pronoun you covers both singular and plural reference, even though additional pluralizing cues may appear in noun phrases or agreement with surrounding material. Dialectal varieties that use forms like yous, you all, or y'all illustrate how surface variants can accompany an underlying yousingular system.

Critics argue that the label can obscure more established analyses of pronoun systems by treating number interpretation as a property of surface form alone. Proponents contend that yousingular offers a neutral, cross-linguistic reference point for discussing second-person number mapping and aids comparative research.

See also: pronoun, second person, number agreement, linguistic typology, dialectal variation