Re: USAGE: THEORY/USAGE: irregular English plurals (was: RE:

John Cowan:
> And Rosta scripsit:
>
> > If you are a young person living in Britain,
> > then many of these people you haven't heard saying 'oxes' are also
> > people you haven't heard saying 'ox'. This is because they don't talk
> > about them. But if you ask them what the plural is, that's when you'll
> > get 'oxes' as the answer.
>
> But is this really meaningful?  If you ask most people what the
> plural of /InsIgni/ is, most will undoubtedly reply /InsIgniz/;
> only the ones who actually *know* the word will say /InsIgni@/.
> Perhaps you are probing a population who simply don't know the
> word "ox" and are giving you the best plural they can.
> After all, if I ask you the past tense of /SEnd/, how likely
> are you to reply with the correct answer, /SEnt/?
> And if you do, is that knowledge, or analogy with /sEnd/:/sEnt/?
I presume "you" means "people in general", in which case their
answer would not count as knowledge, _shend_ not being a generally
known word.

To respond to your point, you would be quite correct if I were
probing a population who don't know the word "ox". But I was
probing a population who do know the word "ox", but it is
sufficiently rare in their experience that they haven't learnt
the irregular plural. This, as you know, is a very familiar
phenomenon with classical/learned borrowings with borrowed plurals.

BTW, even I myself prefer _oxes_ to _oxen_. Of course my
knowledge about English includes knowledge of _oxen_, but
it doesn't feel right to me, probably because I have never
heard it enough for it to get properly ingrained.

--And.

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