Editing Grammatical number (section)

===Obligatoriness of number marking===
In many languages, such as English, number is obligatorily expressed in every grammatical context. Some limit number expression to certain classes of nouns, such as [[animacy|animates]] or referentially prominent nouns (as with proximate forms in most [[Algonquian languages]], opposed to referentially less prominent obviative forms). In others, such as Chinese and Japanese, number marking is not consistently applied to most nouns unless a distinction is needed or already present.

A very common situation is for plural number to not be marked if there is any other overt indication of number, as for example in [[Hungarian language|Hungarian]]: {{lang|hu|virág}} "flower"; {{lang|hu|virágok}} "flowers"; {{lang|hu|hat virág}} "six flowers".