Grammatical number

Grammatical number is a grammatical property of nouns that express how many referents there are. English has both singular and plural forms of nouns.

Meaning

In English, singular nouns are used to refer to single referents; plural nouns are used otherwise.

Mass nouns are unbounded. Singular count nouns are bounded - they’re just one thing.

English also has dual number nouns, which can be referred to with the counter a pair of, e.g. a pair of trousers.

Form

In English, nouns must either be singular or plural.

English nouns generally carry grammatical markers indicating number. Regular nouns use plural -s to mark plurality.

English is very lightly inflected, but does have limited number concord, where a verb agrees with its subject.