Re: USAGE: irregular plurals (was: minimal pair ...)

Tristan (replying to Padraic) wrote:
>Yeah. I just mean that I recognised what 'your mother and I dig the
>Doors' meant, but not 'your mother and I dug the Doors'. I've never
>heard that expression in the past tense before.
I have.
>
>>; people
>>start on one. I'm not generally a prescriptivist, but
>>this is one of those things that gets a sigh of
>>exasperation from me.
>>
>Based on the fact that no-one seems to know what it's trying to prove,
>I'll assume that John started on 0 because it was a prelude to the rest...
Exactly.  Perfectly acceptable format in scholarly articles.
0.,  0.1, 0.2.....introductory material, e.g. "XXX is a language of the YYY
family, spoken by......in......... etc.
1. Phonology  1.1 Consonants 1.2 Vowels etc.
2. Morphology 2.1 Nouns 2.1.1 Pronouns 2.1.2. Declensions; 2.2. Verbs . etc.
3. Syntax...

I've had occasion to try to write articles with this system, but tend to get
the numbers mixed up. "See Sec. 2.3.4.1.1g" never seems to refer to the
correct place.....

Actually John's 0. examples were odd to me; I could use "on" for either one.
Likewise:
1. I set (put) the clock on the table
2. I set the clock on/to 10:30 (Note:  I put the clock on/*to 10:30)

For completeness' sake, I prefer "mouses", and would rephrase to avoid
"sweet tooths" at all costs.