Singular noun forms that whose spelling ends in a silente form the regular plural with the ending-s. Alternatively, they could be analysed as dropping the silente and adding the ending-es, particularly where the consonant is sibilant and there is an identical verb (which would drop thee before the ending-ing): "a dance"→"some dances" parallels "it dances"→"it is dancing" better under such analysis. This applies to nouns that end ince and(d)ge.
Uniquely in American English, the nonstandard pronunciations ofprocesses (/ˈpɹɒsɛˌsiːz/) andbiases (/ˈbaɪəsiːz/), where-es is pronounced likeease, is due to influence from plurals likeparentheses andhypotheses, and perhaps evenbases.
However,processes is also, unusually, pronounced/ˈpɹəʊ̯sɛsiːz/ in England and/ˈpɹoʊsɛsiːz/ in Canada.
FromMiddle English-es,-is, fromOld English-es,-as, Northern variants of-est,-ast(second person singular indicative ending). Replaced Middle English-eth, fromOld English-eþ,-aþ. The falling together of the second and third person singular verb forms in Old English is believed to be due to Scandinavian influence, where the employment of the same verbal endings for both 2nd and 3rd singular indicative follows a similar pattern to that seen in Old Norse (e.g.þú masar, hann masar; þú þekkir, hann þekkir; etc.).
1573,An exposition of the kinges prerogative, collected out of the great Abridgement of Justice Fitzherbert and other olde writers of the lawes of England, page38:
... whereupon king Henry his sonne, as it may appeare by the later clause of this chapter, recouered diuers eschet[s] of lande within this Realme holden by Normans, whiche after they began to adhere to the French king, the kinges enimy[…]
From*-h₁i-t-, fromProto-Indo-European*h₁ey-, the root ofeō, īre(“to go”). Because the nominative singular would regularly have developed to*-is, the attested ending*-es has to be explained as an analogical replacement based on the alternation between-ĕ- in the closed final syllable of the nominative singular and-ĭ- in the open medial syllable of oblique forms that developed regularly in other nouns as a result of the sound change of vowel reduction.[1]
^De Vaan, Michiel (2008), “comes”, inEtymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 7), Leiden, Boston: Brill,→ISBN,page129
Especially after the Early Middle English period, this suffix often (but not always) takes the form-s after polysyllabic nouns, though in nouns ending in the sequences/əl/,/əm/,/ən/,/ər/, the/ə/ of the root may be dropped instead, as inthondres(“thunders”). However, due to the influence of the Old French plural suffix-s, even monosyllabic nouns borrowed from Old French often take-s; if they end in/t/, this is often lost before the suffix:servauns(“servants”), following the parallel simplifications of Middle English/ts/ and Old French/t͡s/ to/s/.
Due to Old English and early Middle English sound changes, the noun stem may undergo modification when this suffix is attached, most notably:
Replacement of the voiceless fricatives/f/,/s/,/θ/ with voiced/v/,/z/,/ð/, aslyf:lyves.
Lengthening of vowels, as inblad (/blad/):blades (/ˈblaːdəs/), though this tends to be levelled out.
Certain nouns may take no genitive ending, especiallyz-stems, and in Southern Middle English, nouns derived from Old English feminines; see those nouns' entries for details. Especially in Northern Middle English, there is also a tendency to omit the genitive in nouns denoting people, especially proper names. In some situations it is difficult to determine whether these nouns should be considered an endingless genitive or an nominative/accusative being used attributively.[1][2][3]
Beginning in the last quarter of the 14th century, this suffix comes to follow a noun phrase rather than a single noun in the so-called "group genitive" construction.[4][3]
Nouns ending with (nominative/accusative) plural suffixes other than-es tend to avoid taking this ending for the genitive plural: instead, following a Middle English tendency to eliminate case distinctions in the plural,consonant stems undergo umlaut,weak nouns/n-stems take-ene, andz-stems take-re or-rene.[5] Though traces of modern English pattern where-'s is added after irregular plural forms are visible in late Middle English forms such aschildrenes(“children's”) for earlierchildrene, the nonattestation of forms such as*fetes(“feet's”) andoxenes(“oxen's”) demonstrates that the reintepretation of the genitive ending as a clitic is still incomplete by the end of the period.
Like the plural suffix-es, this suffix may induce alternations in the noun stem or be simplified to-s before polysyllabic nouns and nouns borrowed from French, though these tendencies are relatively circumscribed: certain alternations do not occur with this suffix and it retains its full form more often than the plural suffix.
^Mossé, Fernand (1952), “V. The Substantives”, in James A. Walker, transl.,A Handbook of Middle English[1], I. Grammar: Part Two. The Forms,Baltimore:Johns Hopkins Press, translation ofManuel du l'Anglais de Moyen Age des Origines au XIVe Siècle (in French),→OCLC,§ 56,page49.
^Allen, Cynthia (13 November 2008), “4. Genitive case in Middle English”, inGenitives in Early English: Typology and Evidence,Oxford University Press,→DOI,→ISBN,§ 4.4, page152.
^Berndt, Rolf (1968), “Bemerkungen zur geschichtlichen Entwicklung der englischen Sprache”, inZeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, volume16, number 2,Leipzig:VEB Verlag Enzyklopädie, page167.
From theOld English adverbial suffix-es, taken from the genitive singular suffix-es due to the analogy of genitive singular forms bearing the suffix used adverbially, although applied indiscriminately to adverbs, prepositions, and nouns which formed the genitive singular differently; seeEtymology 2.
As adverbs often receive reduced sentence stress, this suffix often takes the form-s even when added to monosyllabic roots; however, these forms tended to alternated with unreduced forms in-es rather than being used exclusively.
The a-stem genitive singular ending is derived fromProto-West Germanic*-as, fromProto-Germanic*-as. Based on the voiceless *s, Ringe 2006 argues that this ending was analogically taken from the genitive singular determiner*þas, from*tósyo.[1]
^Ringe, Donald (2006),From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic (A Linguistic History of English; 1)[2], Oxford: Oxford University Press,→ISBN,page201
FromOld Galician-Portuguese-ez, further origins unknown. The preferred options are that it was either an internal innovation (from a reanalysis of the genitive in names ending with-ricus, i.e.-rici, as naming suffix) or a borrowing from pre-Roman languages (given the various forms the suffix took in the Middle Ages). CompareSpanish-ez.
FromLatin-ēs,Latin-is, andLatin-īs, the second-person singular present active indicative endings of second, third, and fourth conjugation verbs, respectively.
Verms whose stems do not end in-s normally take the-s suffix for the passive voice. Until the middle decades of the 20th century (approximately), the norm in writing was to use-es with all-er verbs, but this use is considered archaic today.
R. J. Thomas, G. A. Bevan, P. J. Donovan, A. Hawke et al., editors (1950–present), “-es”, inGeiriadur Prifysgol Cymru Online (in Welsh), University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh & Celtic Studies
