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49-405: Monsieur ( / m ə ˈ s j ɜːr / mə- SYUR ; French: [məsjø] ; pl. Messieurs / ˈ m ɛ s ər z , m eɪ ˈ s j ɜːr ( z )/ MESS -ərz, may- SYUR(Z) ; French: [mesjø] ; 1512, from Middle French mon sieur , literally "my lord") is an honorific title that was used to refer to or address the eldest living brother of

98-743: A massive plural and a numerative plural , the first implying a large mass and the second implying division. For example, "the waters of the Atlantic Ocean" versus, "the waters of [each of] the Great Lakes". Ghil'ad Zuckermann uses the term superplural to refer to massive plural. He argues that the Australian Aboriginal Barngarla language has four grammatical numbers: singular, dual, plural and superplural . For example: A given language may make plural forms of nouns by various types of inflection , including

147-415: A lesser extent) dual are extremely rare. Languages with numerical classifiers such as Chinese and Japanese lack any significant grammatical number at all, though they are likely to have plural personal pronouns . Some languages (like Mele-Fila ) distinguish between a plural and a greater plural. A greater plural refers to an abnormally large number for the object of discussion. The distinction between

196-486: A noun phrase and then a prepositional phrase often led by to or for . For example: "The players gave their teammates high fives." "The players gave high fives to their teammates." When two noun phrases follow a transitive verb, the first is an indirect object, that which is receiving something, and the second is a direct object, that being acted upon. Indirect objects can be noun phrases or prepositional phrases. Double transitive verbs (sometimes called Vc verbs after

245-544: A plural form can pull double duty as the singular form (or vice versa), as has happened with the word "data" . The plural is used, as a rule, for quantities other than one (and other than those quantities represented by other grammatical numbers, such as dual, which a language may possess). Thus it is frequently used with numbers higher than one ( two cats , 101 dogs , four and a half hours ) and for unspecified amounts of countable things ( some men , several cakes , how many lumps? , birds have feathers ). The precise rules for

294-631: A plural sense, as in the government are agreed . The reverse is also possible: the United States is a powerful country . See synesis , and also English plural § Singulars as plural and plurals as singular . In part-of-speech tagging notation, tags are used to distinguish different types of plurals based on their grammatical and semantic context. Resolution varies, for example the Penn-Treebank tagset (~36 tags) has two tags: NNS - noun, plural, and NPS - Proper noun, plural , while

343-494: A plural when it means water from a particular source ( different waters make for different beers ) and in expressions like by the waters of Babylon . Certain collective nouns do not have a singular form and exist only in the plural, such as " clothes ". There are also nouns found exclusively or almost exclusively in the plural, such as the English scissors . These are referred to with the term plurale tantum . Occasionally,

392-463: A state of being ( be , exist , stand ). In the usual description of English , the basic form, with or without the particle to , is the infinitive . In many languages , verbs are inflected (modified in form) to encode tense , aspect , mood , and voice . A verb may also agree with the person , gender or number of some of its arguments , such as its subject , or object . In English, three tenses exist: present , to indicate that an action

441-403: A transitive verb can often drop its object and become intransitive; or an intransitive verb can take an object and become transitive. For example, in English the verb move has no grammatical object in he moves (though in this case, the subject itself may be an implied object, also expressible explicitly as in he moves himself ); but in he moves the car , the subject and object are distinct and

490-408: A word may in fact have a number of plural forms, to allow for simultaneous agreement within other categories such as case , person and gender , as well as marking of categories belonging to the word itself (such as tense of verbs, degree of comparison of adjectives, etc.) Verbs often agree with their subject in number (as well as in person and sometimes gender). Examples of plural forms are

539-401: Is being carried out; past , to indicate that an action has been done; future , to indicate that an action will be done, expressed with the auxiliary verb will or shall . For example: Every language discovered so far makes a some form of noun -verb distinction, possibly because of the graph-like nature of communicated meaning by humans, i.e. nouns being the "entities" and verbs being

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588-445: Is one that does not have a direct object. Intransitive verbs may be followed by an adverb (a word that addresses how, where, when, and how often) or end a sentence. For example: "The woman spoke softly." "The athlete ran faster than the official." "The boy wept ." A transitive verb is followed by a noun or noun phrase . These noun phrases are not called predicate nouns, but are instead called direct objects because they refer to

637-462: Is only for Mister . Plural Words of other types, such as verbs , adjectives and pronouns , also frequently have distinct plural forms, which are used in agreement with the number of their associated nouns. Some languages also have a dual (denoting exactly two of something) or other systems of number categories. However, in English and many other languages, singular and plural are

686-429: Is the use of auxiliary verbs or inflections to convey whether the action or state is before, simultaneous with, or after some reference point. The reference point could be the time of utterance , in which case the verb expresses absolute tense , or it could be a past, present, or future time of reference previously established in the sentence, in which case the verb expresses relative tense . Aspect expresses how

735-579: Is used after zéro . English also tends to use the plural with decimal fractions , even if less than one, as in 0.3 metres , 0.9 children . Common fractions less than one tend to be used with singular expressions: half (of) a loaf , two-thirds of a mile . Negative numbers are usually treated the same as the corresponding positive ones: minus one degree , minus two degrees . Again, rules on such matters differ between languages. In some languages, including English, expressions that appear to be singular in form may be treated as plural if they are used with

784-597: The French mangeons, mangez, mangent – respectively the first-, second- and third-person plural of the present tense of the verb manger . In English a distinction is made in the third person between forms such as eats (singular) and eat (plural). Adjectives may agree with the noun they modify; examples of plural forms are the French petits and petites (the masculine plural and feminine plural respectively of petit ). The same applies to some determiners – examples are

833-415: The "links" between them. In languages where the verb is inflected, it often agrees with its primary argument (the subject) in person, number or gender. With the exception of the verb to be , English shows distinctive agreements only in the third person singular, present tense form of verbs, which are marked by adding "-s" ( walk s ) or "-es" ( fish es ). The rest of the persons are not distinguished in

882-490: The CLAWS 7 tagset (~149 tags) uses six: NN2 - plural common noun, NNL2 - plural locative noun, NNO2 - numeral noun, plural, NNT2 - temporal noun, plural, NNU2 - plural unit of measurement, NP2 - plural proper noun. Verb A verb (from Latin verbum  'word') is part of speech that in syntax generally conveys an action ( bring , read , walk , run , learn ), an occurrence ( happen , become ), or

931-434: The French plural definite article les , and the English demonstratives these and those . It is common for pronouns , particularly personal pronouns , to have distinct plural forms. Examples in English are we ( us , etc.) and they ( them etc.; see English personal pronouns ), and again these and those (when used as demonstrative pronouns ). In Welsh, a number of common prepositions also inflect to agree with

980-780: The action or state occurs through time. Important examples include: Aspect can either be lexical , in which case the aspect is embedded in the verb's meaning (as in "the sun shines", where "shines" is lexically stative), or it can be grammatically expressed, as in "I am running." Modality expresses the speaker's attitude toward the action or state given by the verb, especially with regard to degree of necessity, obligation, or permission ("You must go", "You should go", "You may go"), determination or willingness ("I will do this no matter what"), degree of probability ("It must be raining by now", "It may be raining", "It might be raining"), or ability ("I can speak French"). All languages can express modality with adverbs , but some also use verbal forms as in

1029-501: The addition of affixes , like the English -(e)s and -ies suffixes , or ablaut , as in the derivation of the plural geese from goose , or a combination of the two. Some languages may also form plurals by reduplication , but not as productively. It may be that some nouns are not marked for plural at all, like sheep and series in English. In languages which also have a case system, such as Latin and Russian , nouns can have not just one plural form but several, corresponding to

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1078-414: The destination takes the active suffix -i (> mangai- ) in the intransitive form, and as a transitive verb the stem is not suffixed. The TAM ending -nu is the general today past attainative perfective, found with all numbers in the perfective except the singular active, where -ma is found. Depending on the language, verbs may express grammatical tense , aspect , or modality . Grammatical tense

1127-558: The dual and paucal can be found in some Slavic and Baltic languages (apart from those that preserve the dual number, such as Slovene ). These are known as "pseudo-dual" and "pseudo-paucal" grammatical numbers. For example, Polish and Russian use different forms of nouns with the numerals 2, 3, or 4 (and higher numbers ending with these ) than with the numerals 5, 6, etc. (genitive singular in Russian and nominative plural in Polish in

1176-430: The former case, genitive plural in the latter case). Also some nouns may follow different declension patterns when denoting objects which are typically referred to in pairs. For example, in Polish, the noun " oko ", among other meanings, may refer to a human or animal eye or to a drop of oil on water. The plural of " oko " in the first meaning is " oczy " (even if actually referring to more than two eyes), while in

1225-413: The given examples. If the verbal expression of modality involves the use of an auxiliary verb, that auxiliary is called a modal verb . If the verbal expression of modality involves inflection, we have the special case of mood ; moods include the indicative (as in "I am there"), the subjunctive (as in "I wish I were there"), and the imperative ("Be there!"). The voice of a verb expresses whether

1274-440: The hardest she has ever completed." Copular verbs ( a.k.a. linking verbs) include be , seem , become , appear , look , and remain . For example: "Her daughter was a writing tutor." "The singers were very nervous." "His mother looked worried." "Josh remained a reliable friend." These verbs precede nouns or adjectives in a sentence, which become predicate nouns and predicate adjectives. Copulae are thought to 'link'

1323-655: The king in the French royal court . It has now become the customary French title of respect and term of address for a French-speaking man, corresponding to such English titles as Mr. or sir . Under the Ancien Régime , the court title of Monsieur referred to the next brother in the line of succession of the King of France . It was always used for referring to the prince, not as a style . The Kings' brothers were addressed as Monseigneur or Royal Highness . Hercule François, Duke of Anjou and Alençon (1555–1584),

1372-708: The lemma form, sometimes combining it with an additional vowel. (In French, however, this plural suffix is often not pronounced.) This construction is also found in German and Dutch, but only in some nouns. Suffixing is cross-linguistically the most common method of forming plurals. In Welsh , the reference form, or default quantity, of some nouns is plural, and the singular form is formed from it, e.g., llygod , mice -> llygoden , mouse; erfin , turnips -> erfinen , turnip. In many languages, words other than nouns may take plural forms, these being used by way of grammatical agreement with plural nouns (or noun phrases ). Such

1421-525: The norm. In the objective, the verb takes an object but no subject; the nonreferent subject in some uses may be marked in the verb by an incorporated dummy pronoun similar to that used with the English weather verbs. Impersonal verbs in null subject languages take neither subject nor object, as is true of other verbs, but again the verb may show incorporated dummy pronouns despite the lack of subject and object phrases. Verbs are often flexible with regard to valency. In non-valency marking languages such as English,

1470-411: The number, person, and sometimes gender of the noun or pronoun they govern. Certain nouns do not form plurals. A large class of such nouns in many languages is that of uncountable nouns , representing mass or abstract concepts such as air , information , physics . However, many nouns of this type also have countable meanings or other contexts in which a plural can be used; for example water can take

1519-422: The object that is being acted upon. For example: "My friend read the newspaper." "The teenager earned a speeding ticket." A way to identify a transitive verb is to invert the sentence, making it passive. For example: "The newspaper was read by my friend." "A speeding ticket was earned by the teenager." Ditransitive verbs (sometimes called Vg verbs after the verb give ) precede either two noun phrases or

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1568-502: The only grammatical numbers, except for possible remnants of dual number in pronouns such as both and either . In many languages, there is also a dual number (used for indicating two objects). Some other grammatical numbers present in various languages include trial (for three objects) and paucal (for an imprecise but small number of objects). In languages with dual, trial, or paucal numbers, plural refers to numbers higher than those. However, numbers besides singular, plural, and (to

1617-451: The paucal, the plural, and the greater plural is often relative to the type of object under discussion. For example, in discussing oranges, the paucal number might imply fewer than ten, whereas for the population of a country, it might be used for a few hundred thousand. The Austronesian languages of Sursurunga and Lihir have extremely complex grammatical number systems, with singular, dual, paucal, greater paucal, and plural. Traces of

1666-586: The predicate adjective or noun to the subject. They can also be followed by an adverb of place, which is sometimes referred to as a predicate adverb. For example: "My house is down the street." The main copular verb be is manifested in eight forms be , is , am , are , was , were , been , and being in English. The number of arguments that a verb takes is called its valency or valence . Verbs can be classified according to their valency: Weather verbs often appear to be impersonal (subjectless, or avalent) in null-subject languages like Spanish , where

1715-483: The pseudo-dual as plural of "eyes" עין / עינים ‎ ʿạyin / ʿēnạyim "eye / eyes" as well as "hands", "legs" and several other words are retained. For further information, see Dual (grammatical number) § Hebrew . Certain nouns in some languages have the unmarked form referring to multiple items, with an inflected form referring to a single item. These cases are described with the terms collective number and singulative number . Some languages may possess

1764-626: The relationship those words have with the verb itself. Classified by the number of their valency arguments, usually four basic types are distinguished: intransitives, transitives, ditransitives and double transitive verbs. Some verbs have special grammatical uses and hence complements, such as copular verbs (i.e., be ); the verb do used for do -support in questioning and negation; and tense or aspect auxiliaries, e.g., be , have or can . In addition, verbs can be non-finite (not inflected for person, number, tense, etc.), such special forms as infinitives , participles or gerunds . An intransitive verb

1813-573: The second it is " oka " (even if actually referring to exactly two drops). Traces of dual can also be found in Modern Hebrew . Biblical Hebrew had grammatical dual via the suffix -ạyim as opposed to ־ים ‎ -īm for masculine words . Contemporary use of a true dual number in Hebrew is chiefly used in words regarding time and numbers. However, in Biblical and Modern Hebrew,

1862-564: The subject of the verb is performing the action of the verb or whether the action is being performed on the subject. The two most common voices are the active voice (as in "I saw the car") and the passive voice (as in "The car was seen by me" or simply "The car was seen"). Most languages have a number of verbal nouns that describe the action of the verb. In the Indo-European languages, verbal adjectives are generally called participles . English has an active participle, also called

1911-426: The subject—it is a strictly dependent-marking language . On the other hand, Basque , Georgian , and some other languages, have polypersonal agreement : the verb agrees with the subject, the direct object, and even the secondary object if present, a greater degree of head-marking than is found in most European languages. Verbs vary by type, and each type is determined by the kinds of words that accompany it and

1960-399: The use of plurals, however, depends on the language – for example Russian uses the genitive singular rather than the plural after certain numbers (see above). Treatments differ in expressions of zero quantity: English often uses the plural in such expressions as no injuries and zero points , although no (and zero in some contexts) may also take a singular. In French, the singular form

2009-481: The various cases. The inflection might affect multiple words, not just the noun; the noun itself need not become plural as such, with other parts of the expression indicating the plurality. In English, the most common formation of plural nouns is by adding an - s suffix to the singular noun. (For details and different cases, see English plurals .) Just like in English, noun plurals in French, Spanish, and Portuguese are also typically formed by adding an -s suffix to

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2058-467: The verb consider ) are followed by a noun phrase that serves as a direct object and then a second noun phrase, adjective, or infinitive phrase. The second element (noun phrase, adjective, or infinitive) is called a complement, which completes a clause that would not otherwise have the same meaning. For example: "The young couple considers the neighbors wealthy people." "Some students perceive adults quite inaccurately." "Sarah deemed her project to be

2107-511: The verb llueve means "It rains". In English, French and German, they require a dummy pronoun and therefore formally have a valency of 1. As verbs in Spanish incorporate the subject as a TAM suffix, Spanish is not actually a null-subject language, unlike Mandarin (see above). Such verbs in Spanish also have a valency of 1. Intransitive and transitive verbs are the most common, but the impersonal and objective verbs are somewhat different from

2156-534: The verb ( I walk , you walk , they walk , etc.). Latin and the Romance languages inflect verbs for tense–aspect–mood (abbreviated 'TAM'), and they agree in person and number (but not in gender, as for example in Polish ) with the subject. Japanese , like many languages with SOV word order, inflects verbs for tense-aspect-mood, as well as other categories such as negation, but shows absolutely no agreement with

2205-724: The verb has a different valency. Some verbs in English have historically derived forms that show change of valency in some causative verbs, such as fall-fell-fallen : fell-felled-felled ; rise-rose-risen : raise-raised-raised ; cost-cost-cost : cost-costed-costed . In valency marking languages, valency change is shown by inflecting the verb in order to change the valency. In Kalaw Lagaw Ya of Australia, for example, verbs distinguish valency by argument agreement suffixes and TAM endings: Verb structure: manga-i-[number]-TAM "arrive+active+singular/dual/plural+TAM" Verb structure: manga-Ø-[number]-TAM "arrive+attainative+singular/dual/plural+TAM" The verb stem manga- 'to take/come/arrive' at

2254-409: Was commonly known as le Petit Monsieur , while Gaston, his uncle, was known as le Grand Monsieur . For over seventy years, from 1701 to 1774, the title had no living representatives in the French court, as Philippe I of Orléans died in 1701; Louis XV was the youngest of the sons of Louis of France, Duke of Burgundy and at the time of his accession to the throne in 1715 had no brothers. The title

2303-470: Was restored in 1775 for Louis Stanislas Xavier, Count of Provence, the oldest surviving brother of the reigning Louis XVI , who assumed the title of Louis XVIII in pretence in 1795. After his coronation in 1814, the title passed to Charles Philippe, Count of Artois , his younger brother. Charles Philippe, who led the ultras during the Bourbon Restoration and became King Charles X in 1824,

2352-725: Was the first notable member of the royalty to assume the title without the use of an adjoining proper name. In 1576, Monsieur pressured his brother King Henry III of France into signing the Edict of Beaulieu and effectively ending the Fifth Religious War of France. The resulting peace became popularly known as the Peace of Monsieur . The title was later assumed by Gaston, Duke of Orléans , brother of Louis XIII , and then Philippe I, Duke of Orléans , brother of Louis XIV . From 1643 to 1660, while both princes were alive, Philippe

2401-588: Was the last royal sibling to officially hold the title of Monsieur. His successor, Louis-Philippe I , the next and last king to rule France, had lost both his brothers, Louis Charles and Antoine Philippe , many years before he succeeded to the throne. A fuller list of those who have been known by this title includes: In modern French, monsieur (plural messieurs ) is used as a courtesy title of respect, an equivalent of English " mister " or "sir". It can be abbreviated in M. (plural MM. ), Mssr. (plural Mssrs. ), and rarely M (plural M ), but never Mr. , which

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