Double plural

Not to be confused with Reduplicated plural.

A double plural is a plural form to which an extra suffix has been added, mainly because the original plural suffix (or other variation) had become unproductive and therefore irregular. So the form as a whole was no longer seen as a plural, an instance of morphological leveling. For example, if "geese" (the plural) became the word for "goose" (the singular) in a future version of English, a word geeses might become the licit plural form. Likewise, "peoples" in English currently means "nations or ethnic groups" but is sometimes used informally as a plural of "person" (e.g., "these peoples standing here").

Examples

English and Dutch

Examples of this can be seen in the history of English and Dutch. Historically, the general English plural markers were not only -s or -en but also (in certain specific declensions) -ra and -ru (which is still rather general today in German under the form -er). The ancient plural of child was "cildra/cildru", to which an -en suffix was later added when the -ra and -ru became unused. The Dutch plural form kind-er-en and the corresponding Zeelandic form kind-er-s are also double plurals which were formed in the same way as the English double plurals, while for example German and Limburgian have (historically conservative) single plurals such as Kind-er.

Breeches is an example involving an old plural that did not use a suffix. It was formerly breech which came from Old English brēċ which was the plural of brōc, the latter developing separately as Brook.

Further reading

• Alexiadou, Artemis (2024). "Double plural marking in language mixing and the building blocks of nominals". Glossa. 9. doi:10.16995/glossa.11585.