About: Reduplicated plural

A reduplicated plural is a grammatical form achieved by the superfluous use of a second plural ending. In English the plural is usually formed with the addition of 's': e.g. one cat, two cats; one chair, two chairs. In the Sussex dialect, however, until relatively recently there existed a reduplicated plural: e.g. one ghost, two ghostes/ghostesses; one post, two postes/postesses (note that here the Sussex pluralisation instead of adding just 's' after 'st', adds either 'es' as its usual plural, or a reduplicated 'esses'. Reduplicated plural forms, or similar forms, can also appear in African American Vernacular English, New York Latino English, and in some other rarer forms of American English, often in specific lexical items, such as testes /tɛstɪz/ rather than tests /tɛsts/.