Plurality
ARGH. The plural of 'talisman' is NOT 'talismen'. Just because a noun ends in 'man' doesn't mean the plural ends in 'men', unless the word originally indicates some sort of 'man'. I mean, the plural of 'Roman' isn't 'Romen', is it? And neither is the plural of 'shaman' 'shamen'.
The plurals of 'talisman' and 'shaman' are 'talismans' and 'shamans' respectively, just as the plural of 'Roman' is 'Romans'. I am incredibly irritated by people who get the obvious plurals wrong. I don't mind if people think the plural of 'octopus' is 'octopi' or 'octopuses' (it ought to be 'octopodes') because nobody ever uses the real plural; the same goes for 'cyclops' (singular) and 'cyclopes' (plural).
The plural of 'cow' ought to be 'kine', just as the plural of 'sow' is 'swine'. But 'cows' and 'sows' do fine. Modern English is forgiving of those who just tack on an 's' to the end of a noun to make a plural. You only come a cropper when you get too clever and experiment with the irregular forms.
It's like the old problem of finding a plural for 'Lexus'. 'Lexuses' should be OK. If you want forms that are irregular to English, you'd have to worry about using 'Lexi', since the -us ending is normally pluralised by changing it to -i (as in 'radius' and 'radii'). However, if you want to be pedantic about it, you might want to refer to this relatively complicated section which will show you the mysteries of Latin and Greek plurals, and may initiate you into the study of supposedly more logical languages than English.
If you looked carefully at the page linked to in the previous paragraph, you may have realised (if you don't already know) that the plural of 'datum' is 'data', just as the plural of 'stratum' is 'strata'. This means that you ought to say, 'The data are bad,' and not 'The data is bad.' You would also come to the conclusion that the plural of 'Mercedes' (itself irregular in that context) should be 'Mercedei' (which sounds better than 'Mercedeses' anyway).
And, oh yes, to my friends who have just left school, an alumnus is a male ex-student; 'alumna' is the female form. The plurals of 'alumnus' and 'alumna' are respectively 'alumni' and 'alumnae'. Clear? *grin*
The plurals of 'talisman' and 'shaman' are 'talismans' and 'shamans' respectively, just as the plural of 'Roman' is 'Romans'. I am incredibly irritated by people who get the obvious plurals wrong. I don't mind if people think the plural of 'octopus' is 'octopi' or 'octopuses' (it ought to be 'octopodes') because nobody ever uses the real plural; the same goes for 'cyclops' (singular) and 'cyclopes' (plural).
The plural of 'cow' ought to be 'kine', just as the plural of 'sow' is 'swine'. But 'cows' and 'sows' do fine. Modern English is forgiving of those who just tack on an 's' to the end of a noun to make a plural. You only come a cropper when you get too clever and experiment with the irregular forms.
It's like the old problem of finding a plural for 'Lexus'. 'Lexuses' should be OK. If you want forms that are irregular to English, you'd have to worry about using 'Lexi', since the -us ending is normally pluralised by changing it to -i (as in 'radius' and 'radii'). However, if you want to be pedantic about it, you might want to refer to this relatively complicated section which will show you the mysteries of Latin and Greek plurals, and may initiate you into the study of supposedly more logical languages than English.
If you looked carefully at the page linked to in the previous paragraph, you may have realised (if you don't already know) that the plural of 'datum' is 'data', just as the plural of 'stratum' is 'strata'. This means that you ought to say, 'The data are bad,' and not 'The data is bad.' You would also come to the conclusion that the plural of 'Mercedes' (itself irregular in that context) should be 'Mercedei' (which sounds better than 'Mercedeses' anyway).
And, oh yes, to my friends who have just left school, an alumnus is a male ex-student; 'alumna' is the female form. The plurals of 'alumnus' and 'alumna' are respectively 'alumni' and 'alumnae'. Clear? *grin*
Labels: Language
etched with acid at 8:47:00 am
10 Comments:
The English plural is actually pretty fancy.
I mean, you have to voice the /s/ after voiced stops or nasals, insert a vowel between it after sibilants (including sibilants in fricatives), do that AND convert it to /z/ after voiced sibilants.
If you have certain language centres damaged cuz of some stroke or disease, even though you may be quite intelligent in other areas you'll suddenly be at a loss at how to make the plural for "Wug". Wugsses? (With an s?) Wuz? (no velar?)
Well, the only simpler ways to make a plural are a) not bother, b) repeat the noun.
If you have certain language centres damaged, making an 's' of yourself will be the least of your problems. Unless it is an MOE Language Centre. Haha.
well you could use articles or determiners
like "s finger" instead of "fingers" (fingerz)
have a strict /s/ rule rather than /s/, /z/, /@z/, etc.
haha @ MOELC
Sigh. The /s/ rule is strict in terms of information content. The only reason it has variants is the same reason why the Greeks used elision frequently. It's easier to say 's' in different versions. And those versions aren't really information-rich. You can say 'fingers' with any of those variants and people will know what you mean.
Can you really propose a simpler rule?
Articles have an obvious problem too. It's what led to 'a nuncle' becoming 'an uncle'. Again, it's the sound at the beginning of the word which screws things up. It's certainly not simpler.
If you don't have plurals (like with Chinese or Japanese I guess?) doesn't it create another problem of having to tell based on context? Which might not be enough to indicate whether it's plural, although probably misunderstandings are not grave enough since they've been used for so long without any real problem arising from this as far as I know.
Chinese uses measure words (they're sort of like articles/determiners, except there is no definite/indefinite distinction) which disambiguate where necessary.
In one respect, Chinese is more "declined" than English or even Latin, because often you have to match specific measure words to specific words when you specify quantities.
hence, "yisuo fangzi" for "a house"
but "yige ren" for "a person".
ge/suo are sort of redundant -- they specify information you would have known anyway. In this respect, Chinese is not "inflected" per se (according to the strict morphologists), but it does have a lot of noun-based agreement that in a way, is a lot like grammatical gender. Only you have lots of grammatical genders (other languages off the top of my that also do this include Navajo and Maasai.)
but quantity can also be implied
AFAIK you can just drop the measure word when the meaning is apparent. but if you do use it, you have to use it fully, noun-specific clitic and all.
in a way, this system is more flexible and robust. It's like subject pronoun drop (in Latin, Italian or Singlish -- "ayah got rice already mah")
There is some convincing evidence that Old Chinese used to be inflected, but then lost its inflection. For one, Tibetan, which we know to have diverged from the Chinese languages thousands of years ago, has an extensive case system -- and there is good evidence that Shang Dynasty Old Chinese preserved this (from reconstruction and patterns among dialects that if there had been no inflection, should not have existed).
Shi Huangdi, who you know, in addition to burning lots of ancient books that would have shown us old Chinese inflections, also pursued a vigourous language unification policy which prolly wiped out the last traces of it.
Why did Old Chinese lose its inflection? The pattern is very similar to the Old English --> Middle English transition following the Norman invasions as well as the Latin --> Romance transition following the fall of the Roman Empire; the pattern is not unlike creolisation. I want to find someone who'll support my research into this, but I suspect that Ancient China was not as ethnically or linguistically homogeneous as the Ch. 8 swashbuckling dramas would have you believe.
I kinda feel that the PRC as well as the "Classical Chinese" establishment is intentionally suppressing research into the origins of the Han Chinese people (or that they are simply not very interested), because it would challenge the idea of the Han Chinese as a distinctly separate race from the other minorities.
Soong: I kinda feel that you have built a theoretical framework that is lacking in rigorous underpinnings, and/or irrelevant to present discussion. Phonetics aside, the question is more or less, "How do you indicate plurality simply?"
The answers must be along the lines of a) don't bother, b) repeat the thing to be pluralised, or c) add one sound somewhere that is easy to recognize.
Without making tortuous exceptions or raising peculiar examples, there are no better ways.
German's pretty messy too. =P
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