Re: USAGE: THEORY/USAGE: irregular English plurals (was: RE: [CONLANG]
| From: | John Cowan <jcowan@...> |
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| Date: | Friday, May 24, 2002, 15:54 |
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=?iso-8859-1?q?Jan=20van=20Steenbergen?= scripsit:
> 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.
It is almost always used that way. "People" is the normal pl. of "person";
"persons" is confined to legal/technical contexts. This of course has
nothing to do with the homophonous word "people", pl. "peoples".
> "Person" has only one plural: "persons".
Not.
--
John Cowan <jcowan@...> http://www.reutershealth.com
I amar prestar aen, han mathon ne nen, http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
han mathon ne chae, a han noston ne 'wilith. --Galadriel, _LOTR:FOTR_