Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

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

From:Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Date:Thursday, September 2, 2004, 11:52
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