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/


baby (singular) + -s ----> babies [beibiz] (plural)
bag (singular) + -s ----> bags [bægz] (plural)
book (singular) + -s ----> books [buks] (plural)
box (singular) + -s ----> boxes [boksiz] (plural)
cat (singular) + -s ----> cats [kæts] (plural)
dog (singular) + -s ----> dogs [dogz] (plural)

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

man (singular) + -s ---> men (plural)
woman (singular) + -s ---> women (plural)
child (singular) + -s ---> children (plural)
ox (singular) + -s ---> oxen (plural)
tooth (singular) + -s ---> teeth (plural)
foot (singular) + -s ---> feet (plural)
sheep (singular) + -s ---> sheep (plural)
deer (singular) + -s ---> deer (plural)