Re: Strong Plurals?

From: "Sally Caves" <scaves@...>
Subject: Re: Strong Plurals?


> Classes.  They come from myriad different classes.  English used to have a
> much larger number of noun classes with different plural formations, the
> only ones that really survived being masculine a-stem endings (your
> ubiquitous "s" plural), neuter a-stem (your now very few deer/deer,
> sheep/sheep endings), the very VERY few r-stems indicating familial
> relations (brethren, etc.) and your umlaut nouns (man/men, tooth/teeth,
> foot/feet).  Weak n-declensions dropped out, feminine o-stems, u-stems.
> Welsh plurals are legion, but don't come near the maggelitous quality of
> this list of plurals!
Hmm... interesting.  I've already got 7 noun declensions (my earlier
estimate was wrong), and they have no correlation with these different
plural types.  I'll have to take a look and figure out what classes there
are.