Fwd: excrescent s

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

forwarded for Herb Stahlke, who is reading ADS-L, but not able to
post to it.

Begin forwarded message:

> From: "Stahlke, Herbert F.W." <hstahlke at bsu.edu>
> Date: October 12, 2006 8:39:17 AM PDT
> To: "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject: excrescent s
>
> I’ve been following the postings on this odd English “s-mobile”, to
> borrow a term, with some interest.  I’m waiting now for galleys
> from Wordof a paper I did with a couple of grad student titled
> “English Nominalizations in –s.”  The gist of the argument is that
> words like evidence, linguistics, news, sports, linesman,
> spokesman, etc. exhibit an –s suffix that creates an abstract
> nominal and that this suffix coalesced from several sources in
> Early Modern English, sometime in the late 16th and early 17th cc.
> The sources are
>
>  Evidence, the –s originates in a 2nd c. Latin assibilation of /t/
> before /-iV/.
>
>  Linguistics, the –s arises from a loan translation from Greek of
> the neuter plural as in ta phusika.
>
>  Linesman, the –s arises from a OE genitive
>
>  Sports, news, the –s arises from the plural.
>
>  Spokesman, no one seems to know where this form comes from.
>
>  In –ance and –ence forms in French loanwords, the vowel was a
> nasalized low back vowel with no /n/ until the late 16th c., after
> which it came to be pronounced /–Vnts/.  The –s added to –Vnt
> adjectives and nouns is about 85% productive.  The –Vnt suffix
> itself is about 25% productive.
>
>  I suspect that lots of apparent plurals that take singular
> agreement, like admissions, publications (as an activity or
> office), etc. also exhibit this suffix, as well as the plural –s in
> other uses.
>
>  One of my co-authors Yonghong Cheng is now working on his
> dissertation, a survey and corpus based study of the use of
> questionable plurals like checkers, measles, etc., and is finding
> considerable variability among such words and across social
> groups.  The variability and instability of –s may be related to
> the variety of forms with s-mobile you’ve illustrated in your last
> email, although I’m not sure I could articulate a connection at
> this point.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org