Re: Adopting a plural

Ray Brown scripsit:

> Its speakers have borrowed a plural affix from an "imperial" language and
> apply it sporadically. Isn't that more or less parallel to our sporadic
> use of Latin (and Greek) plurals?
But rarely, if ever, do we apply the foreign plural schemata to our
native words -- which is pretty remarkable, really, considering how
free English is to recycle foreign derivational affixes, creating
words like "redo" with foreign prefix and native root, and even
to create affixes from foreign roots, like -rama from Greek horama.
A plural like "hoodla" remains a joke with no significant usage.

In general, when a Latin or Greek noun is borrowed (or is concocted
in English from Latin or Greek roots), its plural comes with it.  This
is not true of nouns from other languages.  Sometimes the foreign
plural is rejected either at once (*rhinocerotes) or later (schemata
is dying out, I think, in favor of schemas) or in some uses (biologists
speak of antennae, radio engineers of antennas).

> ObExtraInfo   :)
Here are most of the irregular noun plurals of English other than the
Latin and Greek ones (which must number in the thousands, once
one gets into various technical jargons):

Umlaut plurals: man/men, woman/women, foot/feet, goose/geese, tooth/teeth,
	mouse/mice.
Archaic -n declension: child/children, ox/oxen.
Invariant plurals (mostly animals in groups): fish/fish, shrimp/shrimp,
	deer/deer, sheep/sheep, moose/moose, elk/elk, salmon/salmon,
	herring/herring, bison/bison
/-v/ > /-f/ in singular: 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
> It ought to have given French *pouf, but it didn't. The French has
> changed gender and is _la pieuvre_ and I don't know the etymology.
The online Tresor de la langue francaise at
http://atilf.atilf.fr/tlfv3.htm lists both _pieuvre_ (f.) and _poulpe_
(m.); though the latter is labeled "syn. cour. pieuvre', it is cited as
recently as 1929.  16th-century forms _poupe_ and _pourpe_ are cited,
so this may be a semi-learned form.

--
Dream projects long deferred            John Cowan <jcowan@...>
usually bite the wax tadpole.            http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
        --James Lileks                  http://www.reutershealth.com

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