their inflection regarding person already during the 16th century. The singular–plural distinction survived a bit longer, but came gradually out of use. In very formal language, the special plural forms appeared occasionally as late as the 1940s. The plural forms are still found in historic texts and might thus have some importance. However, modern Swedish does not inflect verbs (except for tense), and the plural forms are archaic. In the present tense, the plural was almost always the same as the infinitive. The only major exception was (, "we are"). In the past tense, all weak verbs had the same form in singular and plural. The strong verbs appended an -o to the end form the plural. For some groups of strong verbs the plural also used another vowel than the singular. The group i-a-u is a good example. {|class="wikitable" |- !Infinitive !Present tense singular !Present tense plural !Past tense singular !Past tense plural |- |att , "to work" |, "work(s)" (sing.) |, "work" (plur.) |, "worked" (sing.) |, "worked" (plur.) |- |att , "to play (games)" |, "play(s)" (sing.) |, "play" (plur.) |, "played" (sing.) |, "played" (plur.) |- |att , "to live (dwell)" |, "live(s)" (sing.) |, "live" (plur.) |, "lived" (sing.) |, "lived" (plur.) |- |att , "to fall" |, "fall(s)" (sing.) |, "fall" (plur.) |, "fell" (sing.) |, "fell" (plur.) |- |att , "to exist (be)" |, "exists (there is)" (sing.) |, "exist (there are)" (plur.) |, "existed (there were/was)" (sing.) |, "existed (there were)" (plur.) |} Prepositions Unlike in more conservative Germanic languages (e.g. German), putting a noun into a prepositional phrase doesn't alter its inflection, case, number or definiteness in any way, except in a very small number of set phrases. Prepositions of location {| class="wikitable" |- ! Preposition ! Meaning ! Example ! Translation |- | | on, upon | | The rat dances on the table. |- | | under | | The mouse dances under the table. |- | | in | | Kålle works in Gothenburg. |- | | by | | I am by the lake. |- | | to | | Ada has gone to Gothenburg. |} Prepositions of time {| class="wikitable" |- ! Preposition ! Meaning ! Example ! Translation |- | | at | | See you at the break. |- | | before | | They were always tired before the break. |- | |