Re: Rs

John:
> It's not quite clear whether it was a sound change or something else that
> caused English to dump essentially all its -n inflections, both infinitive
> and noun plural, at the beginning of the Modern English period.  The
> "Lyke-Wake Dirge" from the 17th century still speaks of "hosen and shoon",
> though "hose" has now become a sort of mass noun, and "shoe" has a regular
> -s plural.  Of course, "children" still survives, with an even older
> pre-OE "-r" plural buried under the -n plural, and "brethren" and "oxen"
> are still with us, though "brothers" is the normal plural and And reports
> "oxes" as increasingly common
Increasingly common, that is, in idiolects, rather than in usage. The
point is that OX is a lexeme many neither hear nor use, & consequently
has become susceptible to regularization, as evidenced by the
judgements (of _oxes_ as the plural) by my students, who mostly are
around 20, have grown up in towns, & do not read much.

--And.

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