Re: English Changes or what into Conlangs
| From: | Padraic Brown <pbrown@...> |
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| Date: | Saturday, December 4, 1999, 22:44 |
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On Sat, 4 Dec 1999, Sally Caves wrote:
>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.
>
From what I understand, Western Romance derives its plurals from the
accusative form. Eastern Romance seems to retain the nominative.
Ex.: Ptg senhores, Cast sennores, Cat senyors, OProv senhors (obl),
OFr seignors (obl), Fr seigneurs; but Sic signuri, Ital signori, Rom
[domnii].
>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.
It always had one. The -ar in ON, the -as in OE and probably the -er
in German come from Proto Germanic -az. Gothic retains the -s,
too:
Goth. OSax. OFris. OLFranc.OHG ON
dags dag dei dag tag dagr
dagis dages deis dagis tages dags
daga dage dage tage dagi
dag dag dag tag dag
dagos dagos degar daga taga dagar
dage dago daga tago daga
dagam dagun dagon dagin tagun dougum
dagans dega daga taga daga
Padraic.