Plural morphs in German

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    • 10. December 2020 at 16:57 #741
      Kirsten Middeke
      Keymaster

      So this must be the 20th time I’ve read that {s} is the most frequent plural ending in German. Are you sure, everyone?

    • 11. December 2020 at 9:27 #746
      Deborah Sprang
      Participant

      I think adding {-en} or changing the vowel into an “Umlaut” is used even more frequently.

      Examples:

      Blume-Blum{en}                                           Haus- HÄuser

      Flasche-Flasch{en}                                       Mann- MÄnner

      Tür- Tür{en}                                                  Ofen- Öfen

      Generally, German plural forms can have the suffixes -n/-en, -e, -r/-er, -s. Sometimes, a word gets a suffix AND the vowel changes (e.g. Kuh- Kühe; Land- Länder). {s} is used for example with Foto-Foto{s}, Kino- Kino{s}.

       

    • 11. December 2020 at 10:27 #748
      Kirsten Middeke
      Keymaster

      I thought so, too. Unfortunately, the German corpora I have access to don’t seem to distinguish number in nouns, so I can’t use them to find out which is the most frequent.
      In any case, the fact that so many people seem to believe that {s} is the usual one suggests that {s} is the most productive. What happens when new words enter the language, for example through borrowing from other languages. Which plurals do you use then?

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