Irregular plural

An irregular plural is a plural noun that is irregular. These may be irregular for a variety of reasons, listed below.

Morphology

Morphological analysis yields the following categories:

• Vestigial plurals come in two varieties:
  • A stem-changing plural, e.g. foot-feet
  • A weak noun plural, e.g. child-children
• An uninflected plural, e.g. sheep-sheep
• A voiced plural, e.g. house-houses
• A devoiced plural, e.g. die-dice
• a suppletive plural, e.g. person-people
• An irregular loan plural
  • A French plural (but note most French plurals are regular)
  • A Latin plural
  • A Greek plural

Semantics

Semantic analysis gives categories of irregular plurals.

Set	Members
People	child-children man - men person - people wife - wives woman - women
Animals	buffalo - buffalo ?cattle - cattle deer - deer elk - elk fish - fish goose - geese louse - lice moose - moose mouse - mice ox - oxen sheep - sheep swine - swine wolf - wolves
Body parts set	foot - feet hoof - hooves tooth - teeth
Everyday objects	(computer) mouse - (computer) mice loaf - loaves knife - knives scarf - scarves shelf - shelves
Miscellaneous	elf - elves dwarf - dwarves life - lives