Re: Number/Specificality/Archetypes in Language

--- Steg Belsky <draqonfayir@...> wrote:

> On Sep 28, 2004, at 10:00 PM, John Cowan wrote:
> > My point was that names can take inflectional
> morphology, but can also
> > have things inside the name that look like
> inflectional morphology
> > (and perhaps once were) but aren't,
> synchronically.  Historically,
> > "the Bronx" and "Yonkers" contain plural
> morphemes, but now they
> > always take singular agreement, e.g.
> >
>
> What're the etymologies, then?  I thought the Bronx
> is named after the
> Bronx River, a singular noun.  No idea about Yonkers
> though, but then
> again i don't think i've ever been there.
Bronx supposedly comes from Jonas Bronck the first
settler of the area. He arrived in 1639 with the Dutch
West India company. He settled between what is now the
Bronx and Harlem rivers. He gave his name to the
river, "Bronck's river", and then later it transferred
to the whole area. It seems likely that this is a
possessive morpheme, not a plural.

Yonkers was settled by Adriaen Van Der Donck, he was
given the land by the New England Company in the
1640's. He was a Jonker (or something like  Jonk Heer
"Young Nobleman" I guess) from the Netherlands. And
people would refer to his land as Jonker's Land or
Jonker's and so forth. We just change the "J" to a
more English like Y".

So, in conclusion, I'd suspect that both of these are
possessive -s morphemes, not plural.

Elliott


		
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Y! Messenger - Communicate in real time. Download now.
http://messenger.yahoo.com

Reply