Re: USAGE: THEORY/USAGE: irregular English plurals (was: RE: [CONLANG]

At 9:08 pm -0400 20/5/02, John Cowan wrote:
>And Rosta scripsit:
[snip]
>> As for animals, the bare plurals are arguably regular, due to a
>> productive rule saying that nouns denoting animals of a certain type
>> (huntable?) take bare plurals; certainly the list is open-ended, a
>> telltale sign of productivity.
>
>I think the criterion is herdable (or self-herding) rather than huntable,
>but foxes are huntable,
Aren't all animals huntable?  Indeed, there are probably few species that
haven't been hunted at some time or other by someone or other.  Hunting
domestic animals is not much 'sport' and is considered 'bad form', but I
have, alas, known anti-social kids use domestic rabbits to give their digs
'sport'.

>....and goats herdable, so I think we have an irregular
>survival rather than any sort of rule.  I cannot think of any modernly
>discovered animal which has a zero plural.
Yep - I've never heard "fox" beng used in a plural sense.  But lion, rhino,
widerbeest, zebra are often used in a plural sense.  Zebra & wilderbeest
are 'self-herdable', but we don't get herds of lion(s) or rhino(s).

IME the same speakers are not always consistent themselves and will, e.g.
use 'lion' in some contexts and 'lions' in others.  It seems to me more
like the plural of "fish"; we used 'fish' if we're thinking of a whole lot
of them collectively, but 'fishes' if we're thinking of (fewer)
individually.

I get the impression that usage varies in different varieties of English
and, possibly, in different styles.  Has anyone made a study of this, I
wonder.

Ray.



=======================================================
Speech is _poiesis_ and human linguistic articulation
is centrally creative.
                                 GEORGE STEINER.
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