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

Quoting And Rosta <a-rosta@...>:

> John Cowan:
> > And Rosta scripsit:
> > > As you probably realized after sending that message, analysing these
> > > putative bare plurals as mass singulars runs into difficulties with
> > > "The lion are scarce today", etc.
> >
> > Ungrammatical for me.
> >
> > > You cannot even resort to treating them as analogous to collectives
> > > like "The team have been playing well", because whereas "team" is
> > > singular but triggering plural agreement
> >
> > Not for Merkins: "The team has been playing well" is the only thing
> > that works.  Fowler wanted us to say "The jury is agreed" but "The
> > jury are disagreed", but I think no one follows him in this.
>
> It's a well-known American/Non-American difference. Is it totally
> out in your dialect, or merely more marked?
I'm pretty sure that should be "North American", IIRC.  [Any Canadians
on the list to confirm that?]  At any rate, it is completely ungrammatical
for me.  Indeed, for me it is even worse than, say, use of "ain't" as a
negative copula, which though not native to my dialect I have no qualms
using for rhetorical effect. (To pick any ol' marginal feature for
comparison.)

> > > "These lion were tracked down yesterday".
> >
> > I still can't swallow it.
>
> Can you say "The buffalo are scarce today", "These buffalo were
> tracked down yesterday"? How about "antelope"? "Wildebeeste"?
This may be the "Hunter's nonplural" that I was referring to earlier,
although I suspect that this construction is triggered more often by
overt quantification.  (Cf. Georgian, e.g., where all overtly quantified
nouns may not take plural marking.)

=====================================================================
Thomas Wier          "...koruphàs hetéras hetére:isi prosápto:n /
Dept. of Linguistics  mú:tho:n mè: teléein atrapòn mían..."
University of Chicago "To join together diverse peaks of thought /
1010 E. 59th Street   and not complete one road that has no turn"
Chicago, IL 60637     Empedocles, _On Nature_, on speculative thinkers

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