Re: USAGE: THEORY/USAGE: irregular English plurals (was: RE: [CONLANG] Optimum number of symbols

Jan van Steenbergen:
>  --- And Rosta wrote:
>
> > > man:men, woman:women, foot:feet, goose:geese, tooth:teeth, mouse:mice,
> > > child:children, ox:oxen, fish:fish, shrimp:shrimp, deer:deer, sheep:sheep,
> > > moose:moose, elk:elk, salmon:salmon, herring:herring, bison:bison,
> > > calf:calves, half:halves, hoof:hooves, elf:elves, knife:knives,
> > > life:lives, wife:wives, loaf:loaves, self:selves, shelf:shelves,
> > > thief:thieves, leaf:leaves, scarf:scarves, wolf:wolves.
>
> Wouldn't "brethren" belong to this category as well?
Yes, actually.

My sense is that in contemporary English, _brethren_, like _police_,
lacks a singular, and hence does not belong in the above list.  But
_brethren_ and __police_ remain irregulars in not taking the -s
plural.

> > As for the rest of the list, _oxen_ is obsolescent, being replaced
> > by _oxes_, which leaves just man:men, woman:women, foot:feet, goose:geese,
> > tooth:teeth, mouse:mice, child:children, and, arguably, person:people,
> > as the utter irregulars among the indigenes...
>
> Arguably, indeed. I'm not a native speaker of English, but looking at this
> discussion from the sidelines I don't think "people" can be
> considered a plural form of "person", even if it's often used that way.
> "Person" has only one plural: "persons".
> I would argue that "people" is a singular form (plural: "peoples"), with a
> meaning that with the centuries shifted in the direction of a plural. Thus,
> "the people are..." can be compared with "the government are..."
> Which means, that "people" used as a plural does not have a singular form;
> if one wishes to explicitly express a singular meaning, "person" comes
> closest, but it's not the same thing.
people:peoples, in the sense of 'ethnos', is clearly a different lexical
item. _People_, the putative plural of _person_, is undoubtedly plural:
"these people", "those people". Where the analytical problem and
scope for argument comes in is whether to say that _person_ has two
plurals, one suppletive (people) and one not (persons), or whether
plural _people_ has, like _brethren_ and _police_, no singular
counterpart. My own vote is for _people_ as plural of _person_:
inter alia it gives a better account of alternations like _townsperson:
townspeople_.

--And.

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