Re: English Changes or what into Conlangs

Sally Caves wrote:

> > Otto Jesperson said
> By which I think he means because of contact with the Scandinavian
> peoples it became necessary to level out irregularities.  But I
> don't find that the old Scand. languages (well, I'm only really
> familiar with Old Norse) had a prominent s plural.  Maybe they developed
> it through the same pidgenizing contact with English.
Well, I think they were very poor conlangers, whoever did this
to English, because the -s is now overloaded with so many functions
that it becomes more of a useless agreement marker than anything else.

John's cat's mouse runs.
The three mice run.
The cat's sleeping now.

All this hissing for nothing!