Plural nouns typically denote a quantity other than the default quantity represented by a noun, which is generally one (the form that represents this quantity by default is said to be of a singular number). Therefore, most commonly, plurals are used to denote two or more of something, although they also denote more than fractional, zero, or negative quantities. An example of a plural is the English word cats, which corresponds to the singular cat.
Words of other types, such as verbs, adjectives, and pronouns, also frequently have distinct plural forms, which are used according to the number of their associated nouns.
Some languages also have a dual (denoting exactly two of something) or other number category systems. However, in English and many other languages, singular and plural are the only grammatical numbers, except for possible dual remains in pronouns such as both and any.
In many languages, there is also a dual number (used to indicate two objects). Some other grammatical numbers present in various languages include essay (for three objects) and paucal (for an imprecise but small number of objects). In languages with dual, test, or paucales numbers, plural refers to numbers higher than those. However, numbers other than singular, plural, and (to a lesser extent) dual are extremely rare. Languages with numeric classifiers such as Chinese and Japanese lack any significant grammatical numbers, although they are likely to have plural personal pronouns.
Some languages (like Mele-Fila) distinguish between plural and major plural. A larger plural refers to an abnormally large number for the subject of discussion. It should also be noted that the distinction between paucal, plural, and major plural is often relative to the type of object under discussion. For example, when talking about oranges, the paucal number could imply less than ten, while for the population of a country, it could be used by a few hundred thousand.
The Austronesian languages of Sursurunga and Lihir have extremely complex grammatical number systems, with singular, dual, paucal, major paucal, and plural.
