Singulars and plurals - English Morphology

3. plurals same as singulars

- some words ending in –s do not change in plural: barracks, crossroads, headquarters, means, series, species, works, Swiss
- some singular uncountable nouns end in –s → they have no plurals: news, billiards, draughts (and some other names of games ending in –s), measles (and
some other illnesses)
- most words ending in –ics are normally singular uncountable and have no plural use: mathematics, athletics, physics
Too much mathematics is usually taught in school.
- some words ending in –ics can also have plural uses: politics, statistics
Politics is a complicated business. BUT: The unemployment statistics are disturbing. (konkrétna štatistika)
(The acoustics in this room are awful. – konkrétna akustika)

- other nouns which do not change in the plural are craft (meaning “vehicle”): aircraft, spacecraft, hovercraft
- Chinese, Japanese and other nationalities nouns ending in –ese
- sheep, fish, deer and the names of some other living creatures (especially those that are  hunted or used for food)
- dozen, hundred, thousand, million, stone (14 pounds), and foot (12 inches) have plurals without –s in some kinds of expressions
- Dice (used in board games) is originally the plural of die which is not now often used in this sense. In modern Eneglish dice is gene rally used as both singular and plural.
- Data is originally the plural of datum, which is not now used.

4. foreign plurals

analysis – analyses (Latin)
appendix – appendices (Latin) /appendixes
bacterium – bacteria (Latin)
medium – media (Latin) /mediums
cactus – cacti (Latin) /cactuses
fungus – fungi (Latin) /funguses
criterion – criteria (Greek)
phenomenon – phenomena (Greek)
formula – formulae (Latin) /formulas
vertebra – vertebrae (Latin) /vertebras
kibbutz – kibbutzim (Hebrew)

- some foreign plural (agenda, spaghetti) are singular in English

Plurals in ’s

An apostrophe (’) is used before the -’s in the plurals of letters of the alphabet, and sometimes in the plurals of dates and abbreviations:
She spelt ‚ necessary‘ with two c’s. (NOT …two cs)
I loved the 1960’s. (OR …the 1960s)
Do you think PM’s do a good job? (Or …MPs…)

Compound nouns

- in noun + adverb combinations, the plural –s is usually added to the noun:
passer-by → passers-by
runner-up → runners-up

- the plural of mother-in-law and similar words is generally mothers-in-law etc, but some people use mother-in-laws etc

- the plural of court martial (=‚military court‘) is either courts martial (more formal) or court martials (less formal)

- a noun + noun combinations, the first noun is usually singular in form even if the meaning is plural (shoe shop – 2 shoe shop). There are some exceptions.