hypercorrect pluralization of attributives

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:29 AM -0700 3/30/09, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>On Mar 30, 2009, at 7:41 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>>
>
>>At 3/30/2009 09:40 AM, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>>
>>>not ridiculous or incorrect, much less hypercorrect.  *the name of
>>>the
>>>dice game* is "craps".  you "shoot craps".  "crap game" would be
>>>absurd, like "jack game", "measle infection", etc.
>>>
>>>see the OED entry for "craps".  of obscure origin (not obviously
>>>related to "crap" 'feces'),
>>
>>But, as I learned, the OED also has "crap" and "crap game".
>
>ack.  i somehow missed that.
>
>i would interpret "crap game" as a re-shaping of "craps game",
>accommodating the expression to the usual pattern for N-N compounds.
>
>i'm starting to find more such re-shapings.  i get small numbers of
>hits for {"measle infection"} and {"mump infection"}, for instance.
>
>meanwhile, Joel Berson has pointed out to me that the OED has an entry
>for "eave", back-formed from "eaves", with citations from 1789.  the -
>s of "eaves" was not originally a mark of the plural, but in modern
>english the word is standardly plural in its syntax, and that led to
>the creation of a singular "eave".

A case of "eaves" dropping, then.  And a nice addition to the
"kudo(s)", "pea(s(e))" stock.

LH

>   though many sources (like CGEL)
>treat "eaves" as invariably plural, back-formed "eave" turns out to be
>pretty frequent these days; a google search on {"to the eave"} turned
>up plenty of examples -- many of them with "eave" as the first element
>in a N-N compound (like "eave strut"), but many of them not.
>
>arnold
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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