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Re: English Changes or what into Conlangs

From:Charles <catty@...>
Date:Saturday, December 4, 1999, 18:29
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!