Introducing English Linguistics

duckling, many small animals
that were released into the wild.
number:
Inflections
or word forms indicating whether a word is singular or plu-
ral. Pronouns in Modern English have different forms marking number
(e.g. he, she, it, they); nouns add orthographic -s to indicate plurality (e.g.
toy, toys), except for irregular forms (e.g. child/children, goose/geese). A present-
tense verb will add -s (e.g. walks) if the subject with which it occurs is a
singular third person pronoun or noun.
object:
A clause function realized by a noun phrase or certain kinds of clauses.
In Modern English, pronouns have objective forms, but nouns do not.
Instead, other criteria are needed to determine whether a noun phrase or
clause is functioning as object. In certain cases, objects can be made sub-
ject of sentences in the passive voice: The man called