Re: The Birds and the Bees of Gender

On Tue, 30 Mar 1999 13:28:34 -0500 Brian Betty <bbetty@...> writes:
>On 3-30-99, Steg B. wrote: "Isn't the singular of cattle "cow/bull"?"
>If humour isn't marked, forgive me, but the plural of cow is cows and
>the
>plural of bull, bulls. Cattle is the term for a collective, ie. a
>group of
>said animals. In this case the collective is treated like a plural
>noun.
>"The cattle are moving north." This is the same as people. The plural
>of
>man and woman is men and women, respectively. The collective noun is
>people, which was often treated as the suppletive plural of person.
>Person,
>people. Nowadays I hear 'persons' as a way to make a nongendered
>plural of
>h. sapiens, as opposed to the collective noun people. Weird. This is
>different from words like 'mob [of kangaroo]' because there can be
>mobs,
>clutches, etc. but not peoples, at least not in that abstract sense.
>You do
>hear 'peoples of the world,' but that is the use of the word people
>similar
>to mob or clutch, a group of x animals. This latter use may be as old
>or
>older than the nonplural collective form; I'm not sure. But the two
>are
>clearly distinct uses.
That's what i meant...."cow" is the singular of the collective "cattle"
like "person" is the singular of the collective "people".
It's a distinction of
singular // plural (individuals) // collective (unit)
person -- persons -- people
cow -- cows -- cattle

-Stephen (Steg)
  "ta'^amalei^ya~mil-a, iltao tii fiizhag."

>BB
>Brian Betty, Front Desk
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