[Ads-l] Dropped plurals

[Jonathan Lighter]

It's commonly cited as a feature of "consonan-cluster reduction" in
African-American vernacular, but the students I'm thinking of were white
Southerners.

JL

On Fri, Sep 16, 2016 at 7:55 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> This has been going on for decades - if not longer. I had a number of
> students in the '70s who would write "dentist" and so forth as plurals.
>
> I can remember one who temporarily resisted correction, because "There
> isn't any S!"
>
> JL
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 15, 2016 at 4:55 PM, Katherine W. Stewart <
> katherine.whitworth at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Long-time listener, first-time caller. I am in Arkansas, and in the last
>> couple of years I have noticed the plural -s being dropped in speech from
>> words ending in -st ("guest" and "artist" are two that come up a lot; I
>> heard a plural "enthusiast" for the first time earlier today). And I get
>> it: Some people find -sts unpleasant to pronounce. But recently, I have
>> started to see this written—online, in e-mails, on signs, in text
>> messages,
>> etc. The instances I've collected indicate demographic diversity.
>>
>> Is this happening everywhere? Has it been going on for long? Is there any
>> significance in the leap (if it has been a leap) from speech to print?
>> (Ex., many people who take the "probly" shortcut in speech still spell the
>> whole word out in print.) Just curious.
>>
>> Katherine W. Stewart
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>



-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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