Plural morphs in German

[Kirsten Middeke]

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

[Deborah Sprang]

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}.

 

• This reply was modified 3 years, 5 months ago by Deborah Sprang.

[Kirsten Middeke]

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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