Old English give certain evidence of an influence on syntax. The change to Old English from Old Norse was substantive, pervasive, and of a democratic character. Old Norse and Old English resembled each other closely like cousins and with some words in common, they roughly understood each other; in time the inflections melted away and the analytic pattern emerged. It is most "important to recognize that in many words the English and Scandinavian language differed chiefly in their inflectional elements. The body of the word was so nearly the same in the two languages that only the endings would put obstacles in
Grammatical number ("He goes" versus "They go"). English treats zero with the plural number. Old English did contain dual grammatical numbers. The Finnish language has a plural form of almost every noun case (except the comitative, which is formally only plural). However, when a number is used, or a word signifying a number (monta- many), the singular version of the partitive case is used. and where no specific number is mentioned, the plural version of the partitive case is used and in the possessive (genitive) In modern Romance languages, nouns, adjectives and articles are declined according to number (singular or plural only).