The Plural

The Nominative Plural

53.The plural has its own endings in every case, and they must be learned beside the singular rather than derived from it. The nominative plural is given below. Note that the masculine ending -as makes -ai, which is not the -ai of the feminine dative, and that -us makes -ūs with a long vowel.

Namai yra dideli.

The houses are big.

Katės miega.

The cats are sleeping.

The Accusative Plural

54.The accusative plural takes -us in the masculine and -as or -es in the feminine. Unlike the singular, it carries no nosinė hook: the hook marks the accusative singular and nothing else, so a word ending in a hooked vowel is always singular.

Aš matau namus.

I see the houses.

Ji mėgsta kates.

She likes cats.

The Genitive Plural

55.The genitive plural ends in -ų for every noun of every gender and declension without exception — the one ending in the language that need never be looked up. A soft consonant before it may change: katė gives kačių, t becoming č.

namas → namų

of the houses

knyga → knygų

of the books

brolis → brolių

of the brothers

katė → kačių

of the cats — t softens to č before -ių

• [1] This is the ending met already in kilogramas obuolių (¶32) and daug pinigų.

Agreement of the Adjective in Number

56.An adjective agrees with its noun in number as well as in gender and case. The masculine nominative plural is -i, the feminine -os; in the accusative plural they are -us and -as, matching the noun's own endings.

Geri berniukai skaito knygas.

Good boys read books.

Aš matau naujas knygas.

I see new books.

The Verb and the Plural

57.The verb was said (¶24) to have one form for the whole third person, and the plural does not disturb it: katė miega and katės miega differ only in the noun. Where the subject is mes, jūs, jie or jos, the first- and second-person endings apply as before; the third person alone is indifferent to number.

Berniukas dirba. / Berniukai dirba.

The boy works. / The boys work.

Jos skaito knygas.

They are reading books.

The Case a Numeral Governs

58.A numeral does not simply stand before its noun; it settles that noun's number and case. Vienas and two to nine decline along with the noun and agree with it: nominative plural where the phrase is a subject, accusative plural where it is an object. Ten and upwards, and every number from eleven to nineteen, do the opposite — they do not agree at all, but freeze the noun in the genitive plural whatever case the sentence would otherwise have required. In a compound number the last word decides: dvidešimt vienas namas, twenty-one houses, has a singular noun after it.

Aš turiu du brolius.

I have two brothers. — accusative plural, the verb governing it

Ji turi dešimt knygų.

She has ten books. — genitive plural after dešimt, whatever the verb wants