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

 --- And Rosta wrote:

> > 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.
<snip>

> > 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_.
Okay, I won't stand up lonely against a whole bunch of anglophones :)
I guess you must be right, though what I intended to say, was that "people"
might be the logical plural of "person", it's definitely not its grammatical
plural. I wouldn't dare to deny that "people" is a plural, that must have
evolved from a singular.
But now you say, that "police" is a plural as well? That suprises me! I would
say, that it corresponds with "politie" (Dutch), Polizei (German), la police
(French), policja (Polish), etc. All singular! If you ask me (which I won't say
you should do), "police" should be one of those collective singulars (like
shit, or, to keep it polite, money) that have no plural.

Jan

=====
"You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought,
wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that
happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great
comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe." --- J.
Michael Straczynski

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