Special Cases

With words that end in a consonant and a y, you'll need to change the y to an i and add es.

· more than one baby = babies

· more than one gallery = galleries
(Notice the difference between this and galleys, where the final y is not preceded by a consonant.)

· more than one reality = realities
This rule does not apply to proper nouns:

· more than one Kennedy = Kennedys

Words that end in o create special problems.

· more than one potato = potatoes

· more than one hero = heroes
. . . however . . .

· more than one memo = memos

· more than one cello = cellos
. . . and for words where another vowel comes before the o . . .

· more than one stereo = stereos

Plurals of words that end in -f or -fe usually change the f sound to a v sound and add s or -es.

· more than one knife = knives

· more than one leaf = leaves

· more than one hoof = hooves

· more than one life = lives

· more than one self = selves

· more than one elf = elves

There are, however, exceptions:

· more than one dwarf = dwarfs

· more than one roof = roofs

When in doubt, as always, consult a dictionary. Some dictionaries, for instance, will list both wharfs and wharves as acceptable plural forms of wharf. It makes for good arguments when you're playing Scrabble. The online version of Merriam-Webster's WWWebster Dictionary should help.

Plurals and Apostrophes

We use an apostrophe to create plural forms in two limited situations: for pluralized letters of the alphabet and when we are trying to create the plural form of a word that refers to the word itself. Here we also should italicize this "word as word," but not the 's ending that belongs to it. Do not use the apostrophe+s to create the plural of acronyms (pronounceable abbreviations such as laser and IRA and URL*) and other abbreviations. (A possible exception to this last rule is an acronym that ends in "S": "We filed four NOS's in that folder.")

· Jeffrey got four A's on his last report card.

· Towanda learned very quickly to mind her p's and q's.

· You have fifteen and's in that last paragraph.

Notice that we do not use an apostrophe -s to create the plural of a word-in-itself. For instance, we would refer to the "ins and outs" of a mystery, the "yeses and nos" of a vote (NYPL Writer's Guide to Style and Usage), and we assume that Theodore Bernstein knew what he was talking about in his book Dos, Don'ts & Maybes of English Usage. We would also write "The shortstop made two spectacular outs in that inning." But when we refer to a word-as-a-word, we first italicize it -- I pointed out the use of the word out in that sentence. -- and if necessary, we pluralize it by adding the unitalicized apostrophe -s -- "In his essay on prepositions, Jose used an astonishing three dozen out's." This practice is not universally followed, and in newspapers, you would find our example sentence written without italics or apostrophe: "You have fifteen ands in that last paragraph."

Some abbreviations have embedded plural forms, and there are often inconsistencies in creating the plurals of these words. The speed of an internal combustion engine is measured in "revolutions per minute" or rpm (lower case) and the efficiency of an automobile is reported in "miles per gallon" or mpg (no "-s" endings). On the other hand, baseball players love to accumulate "runs batted in," a statistic that is usually reported as RBIs (although it would not be terribly unusual to hear that someone got 100 RBI last year -- and some baseball commentators will talk about "ribbies," too). Also, the U.S. military provides "meals ready to eat" and those rations are usually described as MREs (not MRE). When an abbreviation can be used to refer to a singular thing -- a run batted in, a meal ready-to-eat, a prisoner of war -- it's surely a good idea to form the plural by adding "s" to the abbreviation: RBIs, MREs, POWs. (Notice that no apostrophe is involved in the formation of these plurals. Whether abbreviations like these are formed with upper- or lower-case letters is a matter of great mystery; only your dictionary editor knows for sure.)

Notice, furthermore, that we do not use an apostrophe to create plurals in the following:

· The 1890s in Europe are widely regarded as years of social decadence.

· I have prepared 1099s for the entire staff.

· Rosa and her brother have identical IQs, and they both have PhDs from Harvard.

· She has over 400 URLs* in her bookmark file.

Singular Subjects, Plural Predicates, etc.

We frequently run into a situation in which a singular subject is linked to a plural predicate:

· My favorite breakfast is cereal with fruit, milk, orange juice, and toast.

Sometimes, too, a plural subject can be linked to singular predicate:

· Mistakes in parallelism are the only problem here.

In such situations, remember that the number (singular or plural) of the subject, not the predicate, determines the number of the verb. See the section on Subject-Verb Agreement for further help.

A special situation exists when a subject seems not to agree with its predicate. For instance, when we want each student to see his or her counselor (and each student is assigned to only one counselor), but we want to avoid that "his or her" construction by pluralizing, do we say "Students must see their counselors" or "Students must see their counselor"? The singular counselor is necessary to avoid the implication that students have more than one counselor apiece. Do we say "Many sons dislike their father or fathers"? We don't mean to suggest that the sons have more than one father, so we use the singular father. Theodore Bernstein, in Dos, Don'ts and Maybes of English Usage, says that "Idiomatically the noun applying to more than one person remains in the singular when (a) it represents a quality or thing possessed in common ("The audience's curiosity was aroused"); or (b) it is an abstraction ("The judges applied their reason to the problem"), or (c) it is a figurative word ("All ten children had a sweet tooth") (203). Sometimes good sense will have to guide you. We might want to say "Puzzled, the children scratched their head" to avoid the image of multi-headed children, but "The audience rose to their foot" is plainly ridiculous and about to tip over.

In "The boys moved their car/cars," the plural would indicate that each boy owned a car, the singular that the boys (together) owned one car (which is quite possible). It is also possible that each boy owned more than one car. Be prepared for such situations, and consider carefully the implications of using either the singular or the plural. You might have to avoid the problem by going the opposite direction of pluralizing: moving things to the singular and talking about what each boy did.

Conclusion

Our course work was investigated from different kind of sources. We chose exactly nouns as a subject of investigation because we think that it is not completely investigated. Whether or not a noun is uncountable is determined by its meaning: an uncountable noun represents something which tends to be viewed as a whole or as a single entity, rather than as one of a number of items which can be counted as individual units. Singular verb forms are used with uncountable nouns. The indefinite articles a, an and numbers are not normally used with uncountable nouns , e.g. My grammar checker gave me a useful feed back. Please give me an information about how to access the library on the web. (The plural form some could, however, be used here -I need some information about…..)There are several ways to express quantity for uncountable nouns, e.g. I read an interesting news this morning. An interesting item of news Could I borrow a paper to make notes? A sheet/a piece of paper Teachers should be able to give students useful advices about oral presentations. some useful advice.

Appendix

Nouns that can be Countable and Uncountable

Sometimes, the same noun can be countable and uncountable, often with a change of meaning.

Uncountable Nouns

Uncountable nouns are substances, concepts etc that we cannot divide into separate elements. We cannot "count" them. For example, we cannot count "milk". We can count "bottles of milk" or "litres of milk", but we cannot count "milk" itself. Here are some more uncountable nouns:

· music, art, love, happiness

· advice, information, news

· furniture, luggage

· rice, sugar, butter, water

· electricity, gas, power

· money, currency

We usually treat uncountable nouns as singular. We use a singular verb. For example:

· This news is very important.

· Your luggage looks heavy.

We do not usually use the indefinite article a/an with uncountable nouns. We cannot say "an information" or "a music". But we can say a something of:

· a piece of news

· a bottle of water

· a grain of rice

We can use some and any with uncountable nouns:

· I've got some money.

· Have you got any rice?

We can use a little and much with uncountable nouns:

· I've got a little money.

· I haven't got much rice.

Countable Nouns

Countable nouns are easy to recognize. They are things that we can count. For example: "pen". We can count pens. We can have one, two, three or more pens. Here are some more countable nouns:

dog, cat, animal, man, person

bottle, box, litre

coin, note, dollar

cup, plate, fork

table, chair, suitcase, bag

Countable nouns can be singular or plural:

My dog is playing.

My dogs are hungry.

We can use the indefinite article a/an with countable nouns:

A dog is an animal.

When a countable noun is singular, we must use a word like a/the/my/this with it:

I want an orange. (not I want orange.)

Where is my bottle? (not Where is bottle?)

When a countable noun is plural, we can use it alone:

I like oranges.

Bottles can break.

We can use some and any with countable nouns:

I've got some dollars.

Have you got any pens?

We can use a few and many with countable nouns:

I've got a few dollars.

I haven't got many pens.

Bibliography

1. A Brief Handbook by Ann Raimes. Houghton Mifflin: New York. 1996.

2. Laycock, Henry. (2005) 'Mass nouns, Count nouns and Non-count nouns' Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Oxford: Elsevier.

3. “Theoretical grammar of the English language” B.S. Khaimovich, B.I. Rogovskaya. Moscow, 1967 y.

4. Laycock, Henry. (2006) Words without Objects. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

5. Merrifield, William (1959). Classification of Kiowa nouns. International Journal of American Linguistics, 25, 269-271.

6. “Morphology of the English language”А.I.Smirnitcky. Moscow, 1959 y.

7. Mithun, Marianne (1999). The languages of native North America (pp. 81-82, 444-445). Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-23228-7.

8. Sprott, Robert (1992). Jemez syntax. (Doctoral dissertation, University of Chicago, USA).

9. « Modern English language» (Theoretical course grammar) V.N. Zhigadlo, I.P. Ivanova, L.L. Iofik. Moscow, 1956 y.

10. http://www.englishclub.com/grammar/nouns.htm

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