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

 --- 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?

> [...]
>
> 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.

As far as I know, English is the only language with this "problem". The Dutch
language, for example, handles the matter in a quite easy and regular way:
  mens (representative of the human kind) - pl. mensen (people)
  persoon - pl. personen.

In Polish (as well as in other Slavonic languages) the situation is slightly
more complicated:
  osoba "person" - pl. osoby "persons" is regular, but:
  czlowiek "human" - pl. ludzie "people" is not.
"Czlowiek" has only its singular form, while "ludzie" is a legal plural form
with exactly the same meaning; "ludzie" is derived from "lud" (meaning
"people", not in the sense of nationality, but in the sense of "the common
people"), which has its own plural form "ludy".

Perhaps someone knows how Old English deals with the matter?

Jan




=====
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comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe." --- J.
Michael Straczynski

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