Editing Grammatical number (section)

===Adjectives and determiners===
[[Adjective]]s often agree with the number of the noun they modify. For example, in [[French language|French]], one says {{lang|fr|un grand arbre}} {{IPA|[œ̃ ɡʁɑ̃t aʁbʁ]}} "a tall tree", but {{lang|fr|deux grands arbres}} {{IPA|[dø ɡʁɑ̃ zaʁbʁ]}} "two tall trees". The singular adjective {{lang|fr|grand}} becomes {{lang|fr|grands}} in the plural, unlike English "tall", which remains unchanged.

[[determiner (linguistics)|Determiners]] may agree with number. In English, the [[demonstrative]]s "this", "that" change to "these", "those" in the plural, and the [[indefinite article]] "a", "an" is either omitted or changes to "some". In French and German, the [[definite article]]s have [[grammatical gender|gender distinctions]] in the singular but not the plural. In Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, both definite and indefinite articles are inflected for gender and number, e.g. Portuguese {{lang|pt|o, a}} "the" (singular, masc./fem.), {{lang|pt|os, as}} "the" (plural, masc./fem.); {{lang|pt|um, uma}} "a(n)" (singular, masc./fem.), {{lang|pt|uns, umas}} "some" (plural, masc./fem.), {{lang|pt|dois, duas}} "two" (plural, masc./fem.).

In the [[Finnish language|Finnish]] sentence {{lang|fi|Yö'''t''' o'''vat''' pime'''i'''tä}} "Nights are dark", each word referring to the plural noun {{lang|fi|yöt}} "nights" ("night" = {{lang|fi|yö}}) is pluralized (night-{{small|PL}} is-{{small|PL}} dark-{{small|PL}}-[[partitive]]).