Noun phrases are normally specified for number: although some noun phrases are always singular (e.g. when headed by a substance noun such as water) or plural (in so-called pluralia tantum like de tropenthe tropics or notulenminutes), the vast majority of nouns can take either a singular or a plural form. Morphologically speaking, pluralization is generally signaled by adding one of two endings: -(e)n or -s. A small number of nouns, such as methodemethod, can take either ending, and a very small group of nouns forms the plural with the suffix -eren. The various forms of plural formation are illustrated in Table 1.

The choice between the -en and –s ending is mostly determined by phonological and/or morphological properties of the nominal stem. The ending -en (pronounced as schwa /ə/ in most varieties of Dutch) is by far the most common one, and is generally found after nouns ending in a stressed syllable, while the suffix –s is generally used after unstressed syllables. As a result, plural nouns usually end in a trochee, i.e. a sequence of a stressed and an unstressed syllable. This means that the majority of monosyllabic nouns such as honddog in (1a) as well as the majority of polysyllabic nouns with stress on the last syllable, such as kanóngun in (1b), take the –en ending; nouns such as kánoncanon with penultimate stress, on the other hand, usually take the -s ending.

However, there are many exceptional cases, which can sometimes be explained by considering the history of the word, but since we do not aim at giving a full description of all the intricacies involved in plural formation, we refer the reader to De Haas & Trommelen (1993:157ff.) Haeseryn et al. (1997), Booij (2002: §2.2.1), and Audring (2020a) for a complete overview of the rules for pluralization and exceptions to these rules. For a (perhaps somewhat surprising) description of the meaning of the plural morpheme, we refer the reader to Section 18.1.1.1.

Dutch nouns can be feminine, masculine or neuter. We will see that the distinction between neuter and non-neuter nouns can be observed from the syntactic behavior of the nouns. The difference between masculine and feminine nouns, on the other hand, has no syntactic or morphological reflex in standard Dutch and can only be observed in pronominal forms such as hij/zijhe/she. It is therefore natural that for many speakers this distinction is more or less neutralized, so that they have to resort to a dictionary when they want to make the distinction (especially in formal written language, where distinguishing between masculine and feminine nouns is still the norm); cf. Audring (2020a).

Most speakers of a variety of standard Dutch actively operate with a binary opposition between common (non-neuter) and neuter gender for non-human nouns; cf. Section 18.2.1.1, sub V, for further discussion. The most conspicuous difference between such nouns is the choice of definite article in the singular: neuter nouns take the definite article het, while common (as well as all plural) nouns are preceded by the definite article de: the two types of nouns are often referred to as het and de-nouns, respectively. Gender also affects the form of demonstrative/possessive pronouns, some quantifiers, attributively used adjectives and relative pronouns. Examples are given in Table 2, which also provides references to the sections where more information about these agreement patterns can be found.

The Dutch determiner system differs from the pronominal system, which still shows a three-way distinction between masculine, feminine and neuter gender. This mismatch seems to result in a system of pronominal reference in which syntactic agreement in gender features is gradually being replaced by a system in which the choice of pronoun is determined by semantic factors such as the sex of the referent; cf. Section 18.2.1.1, sub III. Note also that the determiner systems of many Dutch dialects differ from the standard Dutch one in exhibiting a three-way distinction between masculine, feminine and neuter; cf. Cornips & De Vogelaer (2009) and references therein.

Person features are only relevant to pronouns, since lexical noun phrases like het boekthe book and de manthe man are always third person. Person features are best described by appealing to discourse, as in (2). First person refers to a set of entities including the speaker (the speaker can, of course, also exhaust the set). Second person refers to a set of entities including the addressee but excluding the speaker: if the speaker is included, the first person is used. Third person refers to a set of entities excluding both the speaker and the addressee.

All of the nominal features discussed above are relevant to the classification of the personal and possessive pronouns in Dutch. These pronouns have either a singular or a plural form. We also have to distinguish between the three persons. The third-person pronouns are divided into three groups based on gender. This results in the classification in Table 3. A complete classification of the personal and possessive pronouns would require more distinctions, but we will postpone the discussion of these to Section 18.2, where the pronouns will be discussed more extensively.