addenda/s...alumni

[Benjamin J Barrett]

Yes, I'm curious about the number used with nouns in an adjectival or
attributive position:

1. people food/people mover, alumni association, women's shoes/men's
underwear (modern coinages?)

2. mouse hole, louse remover, manhole, foot powder/footwear/foot odor
(older formations?)

3. businessman's/men's convention (man sounds better to me, but St.
Google prefers men)

It seems mice, lice and feet are never used with pattern 1, and person
never with pattern 2, yet men/man seems to cross over.

Is there a rule to govern whether the singular or plural form is used?

Benjamin Barrett
Baking the World a Better Place (with ice cream)
www.hiroki.us

-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
Of sagehen

>>Benjamin Barrett writes:
>A question I've had for some time is why there are so many alumni
>associations. Is there are reason why they aren't alumnus associations?

>Or are irregular plurals normally used that way?

 Is it irregular? Relying on my memory of high school Latin sixty yrs
ago....... I suppose you could have alumnorum -- an assoc. of graduates.
Or perhaps the *alumni* assoc. is *a* graduate's assoc. (that is one to
which a grad is entitled: genitive sing. not nom plural). I guess the
use of  the term *alumnus/i * is for the purpose of being inclusive,
that is, entitling all former students whether  they achieved degrees or
not. Rereading your question, it occurs to me that you may mean the
irregularity of using a plural adjectivally......? A. Murie