Re: USAGE: WOMYN (was: RE: [CONLANG] Optimum number ofsymbols,though mostly talking about french now

> > But I see no phonological or morphological reasons for not
> > analysing 'woman' as 'wo+man', and that analysis has the advantage
> > of accounting for the lack of -s plural, *womans.
>
> Just that phonetically, the second suffix of "woman" acts just like the
> suffix -man for me.  I don't know about your dialect, maybe you do
> pronounce the second syllable like the free noun "man", but I don't.
>
> And the suffix -man pluralizes as -men, which explains why the plural of
> "woman" is "women" and not *"womans".
>
> On the other hand, *neither* analysis explains the phonetic change in
> the first syllable of /wU/ -> /wI/, and so I don't really see any
> advantage to analyzing it as a compound.  You'd have to say that this
> "morpheme" /wU/ has a plural /wI/, which would make _women_ some kind of
> double plural, unprecedented in English.
>

To interject,  where I live a lot of people say /wUmIn/ - /wImIn/ (please
excuse me if I made a mistake :)), which may or may not explain /wI/...


-Kendra
http://www.refrigeratedcake.com
http://www.refrigeratedcake.com/other/theatre -- Vade Mecum (comic)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Nik Taylor" <fortytwo@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Sunday, May 26, 2002 4:04 PM
Subject: Re: USAGE: WOMYN (was: RE: [CONLANG] Optimum number
ofsymbols,though mostly talking about french now


> And Rosta wrote:
> --
> "There's no such thing as 'cool'.  Everyone's just a big dork or nerd,
> you just have to find people who are dorky the same way you are." -
> overheard
> ICQ: 18656696
> AIM Screen-Name: NikTaylor42
>

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