Casi  +  76987 Sun, 27 Feb 05 11:53 AM SCZ wrote: I think the irregular plural can save one 'phonetic pattern' comparing with the regular plural. You may repeat several time of 'mans', 'womans' and 'gooses' etc. to find it take longer time then 'men', 'women' and 'geese'. So it is stil an example for memory exchange speed. We spend time to remeber them in order to get faster speed. The question then becomes: is infixation, with its irregular forms (a, e, i, o) and infilling process (i.e., altering the internal structure of the word) really all that more 'efficient' than adding -s? Furthermore, even if the irregular forms were to change to more 'regular' forms, there'd be the chore of having to re-learn new forms, along with the old forms, otherwise all the books, and all that history and information that's been written down so far would be in the old way, and if new learners are to be able to read that stuff, they'll need to know what it means. It would be comparable, in a way, to a modern day English major studying Middle English. One needs to know the way it was done so as to be able to understand the text. Change takes time. But then again, there's so much history housed in English spelling. Why paint over it? Casi Joined on Sat, Sep 25 2004 Regular Member 547 Plurals, Spelling, Phonetics

	Pemmican  +  77648 Tue, 01 Mar 05 11:37 PM The "-s" is the most common suffix left in English by now, it took over several functions: a) plural indicator: one apple - two apples b) 3rd ps sg inflection indicator: sing - he sings c) genitive ending: Jon's house In my opinion, the -s in b) will certainly disappear sometime, it was already mentioned, that it is very often dropped already. In Scandinavian languages, such as Swedish, Danish and Norwegian, the inflection endings have vanished completely already and all persons take the same form of the verb. The -s will also disappear in the function of genitive indicator. There's a tendency to replace it by the preposition of and the following noun in the object case. E.g. Jon's house --> The house of Jon (this will get more common also in these cases with people, not only items). But the -s will certainly not disappear in its function as a plural indicator, I'd rather say that it will get more common as it already is by now. More and more irregular plural forms will vanish and be replaced by -s instead, also 'sheeps' instead of 'sheep' as the plural form is more probable than keeping the irregular form 'sheep'. Pemmican Joined on Thu, Aug 21 2003 Regular Member 569 Wâ mag ich mich nu vinden? wâ mac ich mich nu suochen, wâ? nu bin ich hie und bin ouch dâ und enbin doch weder dâ noch hie. wer wart ouch sus verirret ie? wer wart ie sus... Nouns, Verbs, Prepositions, Plurals, Inflections, Genitives

	equivocal  +  77669 Wed, 02 Mar 05 12:53 AM The "-s" is the most common suffix left in English by now, it took over several functions: a) plural indicator: one apple - two apples b) 3rd ps sg inflection indicator: sing - he sings c) genitive ending: Jon's house It would be erroneous to say that the suffixes in a), b) and c) are the same. Orthographically maybe, and that only would be for a) and b). Even then only for regular plurals and verbs. c) has an apostrophe which makes a world of a difference. They are different suffixes sharing some similar properties. eq equivocal Joined on Tue, Mar 1 2005 Junior Member 58 Verbs, Suffixes, Plurals, Apostrophes, Inflections, Genitives

	equivocal  +  77675 Wed, 02 Mar 05 01:12 AM 'Five books' is a piece of idea. From the word 'five' we know it means more than one book. The question is why we put an extra 's' to denote it is a plural? If we don't put this 's', shall somebody mistake what we mean to say? This is another example of double expressing..... There is no logical reason but just rote. You are absolutely right. I assume from your name that you speak Mandarin Chinese. Simiar "useless" phenomena apply in Chinese, where you have classifiers, which serve no purpose as well: 1) wu ben shu 2) *wu shu Chinese is a language which does not inflect, unlike english. So the plural -s that you refer to in english exists purely for agreement reasons. The suffix depends as much on the "amount" of the object in question but also the determiner that precedes it. Singular determiners take singular nouns: 3) A book 4) The book(s) (the definite article 'the' can be both sg or pl) 5) Two books 6) All the books 7) *All the book In 6) and 7) the agreement of the noun agrees with the quantifier all. It is conceivable (though silly) to think of 6) as referring to one book. For example, "move all the books from the room". You may go into the room and discover that there is only one book, or many. Such idiocyncracies are the joys of learning new languages. eq equivocal Nouns, Articles, Plurals, Definite Articles, Singular Nouns, Determiners

	Su Cheng Zhong  +  77920 Wed, 02 Mar 05 11:26 PM >Furthermore, even if the irregular forms were to change to more 'regular' forms, there'd be the chore of having to re-learn new forms, along with the old forms, otherwise all the books, and all that history and information that's been written down so far would be in the old way, and if new learners are to be able to read that stuff, they'll need to know what it means. It would be comparable, in a way, to a modern day English major studying Middle English. One needs to know the way it was done so as to be able to understand the text. That is right. The evolution of language is very slow but never stopped. Every language went the same way. If we know the change before it happened, we can make the languages of this world compromise each other in some way. Su Cheng Zhong Joined on Mon, Feb 7 2005 New Member 29 Plurals

	Su Cheng Zhong  +  77928 Wed, 02 Mar 05 11:58 PM korin said: >Over approximately 1500 years, the mammoth set of inflections of the Old English has virtually been discarded leaving only 's' (plural nouns, 3rd person singular verbs, and saxon genitive) in modern English. English has become a rather analytic lg, where most of the syntactic relations within a sentence are expressed by means of word order. I always confused by the 3rd person singular verbs. If some one like, can you explain the following sentence, for me? "Jones shake(s) hand(s) with Tom." The question is that how we calssify the subject and object, singular or plural? I always wonder that the shaking hand(s) is like the meaning of shaking a bar. For shaking hand(s) means that you wave your hand and cause other hand waving. So it should be 'Jones shakes Tom's hand', not 'Jones shakes hands with Tom'. For Jones' hand is initiative and Tom's hand is passive. If you regard both hand were shaken simultaneously, then, who are (is) subject? Are both Jones and Tom are subject? Then we have to say, 'Jones and Tom shake hands.' Su Cheng Zhong Nouns, Verbs, Regards, Plurals, Inflections, Word Order, Singular Verbs, Genitives

	Casi  +  78052 Thu, 03 Mar 05 09:49 AM "Jones shake(s) hand(s) with Tom." If you regard both hand were shaken simultaneously, then, who are (is) subject? Are both Jones and Tom [the] subject? Good question, SCZ. to shake hands is reciprocal: to shake [each other's] hand. Casi Regards, Plurals

	Pemmican  +  80923 Sun, 13 Mar 05 06:59 PM equivocal It would be erroneous to say that the suffixes in a), b) and c) are the same. Orthographically maybe, and that only would be for a) and b). Even then only for regular plurals and verbs. c) has an apostrophe which makes a world of a difference. They are different suffixes sharing some similar properties. Oh, I didn't say that, of course they're (historically) not the same, but all the forms fell together! In today's English, the "-s" IS the indicator for plural, 3rd person pres. and genitive. Even though you still SEE a difference in the genitive (apostrophe), in spoken language, you can't decide whether "mother(')s" is plural or genitive case unless you know the context. You can't know in spoken language either, whether "show(')s" is plural, genitive object, or 3rd ps pres. ending, if it's out of context. (There are two shows this evening, The show's highlight, He shows him a secret). This shows that the function of -s has been widened, the actual forms fell together. Pemmican Verbs, Suffixes, Plurals, Apostrophes, Genitives