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

--- John Cowan <jcowan@...> wrote:

> Stephen Pinker thinks that this is because irregular
> inflected forms,
> unlike regular ones, tend to be associated with
> particular uses of the
> plural, since they are stored separately in memory.
> "Mice" tends to
> be used in a collective way, not a distributive one
> (since one mouse is
> pretty much interchangeable with another most of the
> time),
Pretty much why "mouses" sounds so weird for computer
mice. One mouse is very much like another whether it's
got a tail or a PS/2 cable on.

> and we feel
> funny applying it in a sentence like "Those
> computers have optical mice".
Sounds 100% normal.

> So we regularize, or avoid the construction with
> "Each of those computers
> has an optical mouse."
A little cumbersome, though.

> Here are some other examples using less novel words:
>
> 0a)     I set the flagpole on its base.
> 0b)     I set the flag to "true".
>
> 1a)     The flagpole stood on the top of the
> mountain.
> 1b)     The cottage stood at the foot of the
> mountain.
> 1c)     The flagpoles stood on the tops of the
> mountains.
> 1d)     ?The cottages stood at the feet of the
> mountains.
>
> 2a)     This classical-music lover has a sweet
> tooth.
> 2b)     ?These classical-music lovers have sweet
> teeth.
Here, "sweet-tooths" is a compound (meaning "likes
sweet foods"), whereas "sweet teeth" are, well, "teeth
that taste sugary".

> 3a)     Your mother and I dig the Doors.
> 3b)     ?Back in the Sixties, your mother and I dug
> the Doors.
>
> 4a)     This job really sucks.
> 4b)     This job really bites.
> 4c)     My last job really sucked.
> 4d)     ?My last job really bit.
For the most part, I don't understand what's wrong. 4d
sounds a bit off, but I don't naturally use the word
bite in that way, so don't really know how to use it
anyway.

The strangest thing you did in the whole post is start
the first example on naught rather than one. Now
_that_ bites. ;)

Padraic.


=====
il dunar-li c' argeont ayn politig;
     celist il pozponer le mbutheor ayn backun gras.

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