Re: question - Turco-Japanese (British Vikings, 400 AD)

There are "s" plurals in Old English, notably the Masculine A stem nouns.
Stan, stanas.  It was exposure to the Scandinavians, however, that produced
a kind of pidgen or simplification of Old English plurals in favor of the
huge class of Masc. A-stem nouns. As Tom Shippey said on "The Story of
English," it was simply easier to say "stone/stones, horse/horses,
ship/ships, and book/books" instead of "stan/stanas, hors/hors, scip/scipu,
and boc/bec."

----- Original Message -----
From: "Benct Philip Jonsson" <bpj@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Wednesday, November 24, 2004 8:21 AM
Subject: Re: question - Turco-Japanese (British Vikings, 400 AD)


> Ray Brown wrote:
>> . Their Norse language
>> was one of the ingredients that contributed towards the development of
>> Middle English and hence modern English. The almost universal use
>> of -(e)s
>> as the plural suffix, for example, is thought to be due to old Norse
>> influence.
>
> How could that be?  There are no -s plurals in Old Norse.
> Middle French is a much liklier source of influence in
> this case.
>
> --
>
> /BP 8^)
> --
> Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se
>
>         Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant!
>                                             (Tacitus)
>