Re: Phoneme winnowing continues
| From: | Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> |
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| Date: | Wednesday, June 4, 2003, 1:13 |
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On Tue, Jun 03, 2003 at 08:44:56PM -0400, John Cowan wrote:
> What's different about those Latin and Greek forms is that their plurals
> come with them no matter when the borrowing is made. If today I introduce
> a new borrowing from Greek, I automatically carry the Greek plural with me;
> it is a *rule* of English that Latin and Greek borrowings come in pairs.
That's an interesting rule. Why just those two languages? Why not,
say, the "modern Latin", Italian? "I'd like two large pepperoni pizze,
please. With some pepperoncini on the side - not just one pepperoncino
like last time, either."
> Eventually the plural may get replaced ("pendulums", e.g.), true.
Well, I still say "pendula" to refer to more than one pendulum. But then
I also talk about multiple sports "stadia", or the fact that there will soon
be two large "aquaria" in the southeast US instead of one, so I'm
probably a bad sample candidate. :)
-Mark
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