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

Nik Taylor scripsit:

> That's probably what I'd say.  It sounds funny, but "foots of the
> mountains" is even stranger sounding.
I know.  It's a funny little pressure: it doesn't have overwhelming
force like the rules that say "Irregular head, irregular compound" and
"No head or root, must be regular".  It just makes you uncomfortable
with what should be very ordinary (like "tops of the mountains" or --
using a metaphor -- "heads of the cliffs") *when* the word in question
is irregular.  The irregular plural is being used in the "wrong" way,
and it upsets us, or some of us.  "Heads" and "tops" are regular plurals
and can be used in any of the uses of plurals; but "feet" has a little tag
that says "probably collective" on it, and distributive uses seem weird.

--
John Cowan  jcowan@reutershealth.com  www.ccil.org/~cowan  www.reutershealth.com
"If I have seen farther than others, it is because I am surrounded by dwarves."
        --Murray Gell-Mann