English Plural Morpheme

In English, to form the plural noun from the singular one is by adding the plural marker to the noun. The common plural marker or the plural morpheme is the suffix –s, although in reality this morpheme can be realized by the phonetic representations [s], [z], or [iz]. These phonetic representations or allomorphs are conditioned by the phones of the base to which the plural morpheme is added.

Some countable nouns are not added with the suffix –s to make them plural but the number of these types are not as many as those added with the suffix –s. Therefore, this plural morpheme is usually called the morpheme –s because this suffix frequently occurs in the plural noun formation. The following are the examples of the words containing the plural morpheme or the morpheme {-s} which is pronounced /s/, /z/, or /iz/

Singular {-s} Plural Phobetic
Representation

baby -s babies [beibiz]
bag -s bags [bægz]
book -s books [buks]
box -s boxes [boksiz]
cat -s cats [kæts]
dog -s dogs [dogz]

As mentioned above, the plural morpheme or the morpheme {-s} is not always realized by the suffix –s. The following are the examples:

Singular {-s} Plural

man -s men
woman -s women
child -s children
ox -s oxen
tooth -s teeth
foot -s feet
sheep -s sheep
deer -s deer

These morphological forms will determine the arrangement of syntactic structure. In sentence level, the subject must agree with the verb. Look at the examples below:

(1) The book is on the table.
(2) The books are on the table.

(3) The student is in the class.
(4) The students are in the class.

(5) The man is in my room.
(6) The men are in my room.

(7) The student walks to school.
(8) The students walk to school.

(9) The woman goes to the market.
(10) The women go to the market.

The examples above show that in present tense, to be which is suitable with the plural morphemes added to the noun is are like in sentence (2), (4), and (6). In sentence (8) and (10), the plural morpheme {-s} need the verb form without inflectional morpheme. Inflectional morpheme {-s} to show present tense is needed in the sentence whose subject is singular or uncountable noun.
In Phrase level some determiners must agree with the plural morpheme. Look at the following examples.

(11) this student
that student
a student

(12) these students
those students
several students
many students
a lot of students
a few students

(13) *this students
*that students
*these student
*those student

In example (11) the determiners this and that need singular noun. The morpheme {-s} is needed in the noun if it comes after the determiners these, those, several, many, a lot of, ad a few like in example (12). The phrases in (13) are not grammatically correct.