Re: English Changes or what into Conlangs

Raymond Brown wrote:
>
> At 1:31 am -0800 3/12/99, abrigon wrote:
> > Why did
> >we get stuck with -es and -s, I think it may have alot to do with those
> >who wrote dictionaries back in the 16th Century,
>
> Hardly - the majority of the population couldn't read any dictionaries in
> the 16th century.  No matter what lexicographers said - it'd hardly affect
> the language.
Well exactly.  Johnson did establish spelling conventions to a great
extent,
but this was the mid eighteenth century, when literacy was more
widespread.
There was nothing comparable in the sixteenth century.

>
> Why all those -(e)s plurals?  Might have something to do with an invasion
> of England in 1066 - and even more with the imposition of Norman French as
> the official language of England (and bits of Wales & Scotland the Normans
> managed to capture) over the next three hundred years.
Well Ray, an -s plural did exist in Old English.  In the masculine
a-stem,
the most common of the noun classes in OE, as I pointed out in an
earlier post.
Which leads me to wonder: what is the status of the "s" plural
in Indo-European nouns and in Latin?  Where did the Old French speakers
get
it, and why did it become standard there as well?

Looking at my extremely dusty Latin grammar, I note that you have s
plurals
in the accusative case in all the declensions, and in nominative and
accusative
in *some* declensions.  Did this influence development of s ending in
French?

        puella/puella, but puellam/puellas.
        vir/viri, but virum/viros.
        lex/leges, and legem/leges.
        imber/imbres and imbrem/imbres.

Curious.  Where, then, does OE get its s plural?  German:  s is a plural
in
some words, but it's overshadowed by -er and -en plurals:  Die Manner,
"the men."
Die Lieder, "the songs."  Die Gedanken, "the thoughts."  Die Autos, "the
cars."
No wonder Mike thought English "s" plural came from the French.

Sally
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