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

From:Kendra <kendra@...>
Date:Sunday, May 26, 2002, 23:17
> > 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 >

Replies

Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>WOMYN (was: RE: [CONLANG] Optimum numberofsymbols,though mostly talking about french now
Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...>