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

I can see why they make you feel funny - but it has nothing to do with
whether you consider 'family' as singular or plural. They make you feel
funny because the agreement breaks down; in 1a you have 'family' as a
plural - necessary to agree with 'each other' which by definition cannot be
singular - whereas in 1b you have 'family' as singular, which clearly
conflicts with the non-singular nature of 'each other'. The same goes for
2b, for the same reason.
Mike
----- Original Message -----
From: "John Cowan" <jcowan@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Friday, May 24, 2002 9:57 PM
Subject: Re: THEORY/USAGE: irregular English plurals (was: RE:


> And Rosta scripsit:
>
> > 1a. My family were arguing with each other.
> > 1b. My family was arguing with each other.
> >
> > 2a. My family were behaving themselves.
> > 2b. My family was behaving themselves.
> > 2c. My family was behaving itself.
>
> All of these make me feel funny, but I have to think about them
> further.  My knee-jerk reaction is that they are ungrammatical
> but acceptable.
>
> Which reminds me of a favorite line from a novel:  "No, it are
> that we am going at Athens".  Which is said by a hispanophone
> Norwegian with strong L2 English who is speaking ungrammatical
> Classical Greek.
>
> --
> John Cowan <jcowan@...>     http://www.reutershealth.com
> I amar prestar aen, han mathon ne nen,    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
> han mathon ne chae, a han noston ne 'wilith.  --Galadriel, _LOTR:FOTR_