Knowra Grammatical number Grammatical number Grammatical number is a category that marks distinctions in quantity, such as one versus more than one. Languages express it through forms of nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, or other words.
Grammatical person : A grammatical category distinguishing speech-act roles such as speaker, addressee, and others. Person and number combine in pronouns and verb forms, as in first-person plural.
Plural : A grammatical number value typically used for more than one entity. Plural is the most familiar number value, but languages define its use differently.
Singular : A grammatical number value typically used for one entity. Singular contrasts with plural, though its exact use depends on a language's number system.
Inclusive and exclusive we : A distinction between first-person plural pronouns that include or exclude the addressee. Some languages combine plural number with a further distinction about who belongs to the group.
Grammatical agreement : A grammatical relation in which words share features such as number, gender, or person. Agreement spreads number features from nouns to verbs, adjectives, or pronouns.
Dual grammatical number : A grammatical number value used for exactly two entities. The dual shows how number systems can distinguish two from both one and many.
Paucal : A grammatical number value used for a small number of entities, more than two in some languages. Paucal values distinguish a few entities from both a pair and a larger group.
Grammatical number in pronouns : Number distinctions expressed in pronoun forms, such as I versus we. Pronouns often encode number directly and may preserve distinctions absent from nouns.
Noun class : A system that groups nouns into grammatical categories and may affect agreement on related words. Number marking can interact with noun classes to determine forms across a sentence.
Grammatical number in verbs : Verb inflection or marking that distinguishes the number of a subject or object. Some languages mark number on verbs as well as on noun phrases.
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