Re: Performative verbs (was: Re: here is some stuff i want all of ya'll to look at)

Quoting John Cowan <jcowan@...>:

> Andreas Johansson scripsit:
>
> > If we treat all Swedish and German nouns with impredictible plurals
> > as irregular, we're looking at very significant percentages of the
> > dictionaries.
>
> In the case of German, almost all nouns are irregular.  The regular
> ending (that is, the one applied when there is no lexical information)
> is -s, but that is very rare.  In Dutch, OTOH, most nouns are regular,
> taking either -s or -en (predictable by rule).
I've never felt entirely happy with an analysis that labels the approximately
one zillion feminines with plurals in -en or -n as irregular.

I guess it depends on purpose - telling students learning German that the
regular pl ending is -s certainly wouldn't be very helpful! You'd get better
results telling them that zero plurals are regular on masculines and neuters
...

> > Something I find nifty is the existence of pairs like _mask_, pl
> > _masker_, "masque", and _mask_, pl _maskar_, "worm", or _slav_, pl
> > _slavar_, "slave", and _slav_, pl _slaver_, "Slav".
>
> The first must be a coincidence, but "slave" and "Slav" are after all
> doublets.
_Mask_ "masque" is, of course, a French loan, while _mask_ "worm" is, AFAIK,
inherited.

                                             Andreas