Re: THEORY: Storage Vs. Computation

John Cowan wrote:
> when the "i" was lost, we
> got "man" : "men", an irregularity that has been maintained by
> its frequency for the last 1000 years and shows no signs of
> going under.
And "kyne" for "cows" was an interesting example of this as well.  The
ow --> y (/u/, /i/, originally) was the result of umlaut, and the -n was
actually a plural suffix (as in oxen, children) added to the irregular
plural.  I believe children is another "double plural", the -r and the
-en being plural suffixes.

ObConlang: Speaking of irregularities, I've recently decided to add
irregular plurals to W.  Some nouns form their plural with -na, or -fa
in a very few cases.  In Old Watakassi', -(l)i was the dual ending, and
-na/-fa was the plural.  It's believed that -fa was originally a paucal
suffix, based on the fact that some of the paucal pronouns contained
-fa.  -fa was a rare plural to begin with.  Generally, the plural was
lost, and the dual took over, but some nouns lost the dual, hence the
-na/-fa plurals.

> "Sound change operates regularly to produce irregularity;
> analogy operates irregularly to produce regularity."
Nice way to put it, is that a quote from someone?  If so, who?

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