Re: USAGE: Persons unknown
| From: | Jeff Rollin <jeff.rollin@...> |
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| Date: | Friday, March 16, 2007, 14:34 |
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On 16/03/07, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> wrote:
> Judging from anglophone newspapers, crimes are often perpetrated by persons
> unknown. Why not "unknown persons"?
>
> Andreas
>
There are a few English expressions that follow this, usually
calques/Anglicized loans from French or Latinate expressions; other
examples would be "Attorney(s)/Governor(s) General", where the first
word inflects but not the second because nouns inflect for number in
English but not adjectives - "big houses", not "big-s house-s" or
"big-s house".
Despite appearances, English actually is often more right-branching
than left. For example:
"[[The [big tall scary] man] [that I saw [when I went [to Scotland [on
holiday [in summer]]]]]]",
not the exclusively left-branching:
"[The [big tall] [[in summer] [on holiday] [to Scotland] I went when]
I saw that] man]]]]"
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A: Impossible to tell, since we're still in the Beforemath.
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