irrregular plurals

[Claire Bowern]

To my eternal frustration as a very second language learner, Russian has a
number of these. The two that come to mind offhand are 'child' sg:
reb'onok, pl deti, and 'person' - sg chelovek, pl l'udi. There are others.
A couple also came up in the Tocharian class I'm sitting in on this
semester; they are synchronically suppletive but historically regular, like
'king', which in the nom.sg is wa"lo (a" = fremdvokal) but due to
Lindeman's Law the plural (and, I suppose, all non-monosyllabic case forms)
has a stem la:-.
Claire

At 05:42 AM 02/9/01 +0000, gilbert read wrote:

>-        I am asking this question purely out of idle
>curiosity and not in relation to any project thesis or
>whatever.
>          Does anyone know of any language where the
>singular and plural of a significant number of NOUNS
>are formed from historically unrelated stems?
>          In English we have many nouns with irregular
>plurals but in nearly all cases it is apparent that
>they were originally formed from the same or cognate
>stems.
>          Examples
>man/men, stigma/stigmata, foot/feet, mouse/mice
>cow/kine, ox/oxen, shelf/shelves
>The only example I can think of in English where the
>singular and plural of a noun are formed from
>unrelated stems is the rather weak one of
>person/people
>when used in some contexts like
>How many people can you see?
>(By contrast in many languages singular and plurals of
>pronouns and verb forms use apparently completely
>unrelated stems. e.g. he is/they are)
>I can only see one person.
>
>I've gone through the grammars of numerous languages
>on the shelf in the State Library in Melbourne and the
>case seems similar for all languages in grammars on
>the shelves.
>For example, in all examples of irregualar plurals in
>Fila Island language(Vanuatu) that I could find one
>could surmise that historically they were originally
>formed from the same stems.
>Just a few examples
>tefine(woman)fafine(women),
>teriki(chief)/fitoriki(chiefs),
>tangata(man)/taangata(men)
>         I am sure you can think of examples in
>languages with which you are familiar.
>         Please keep replies as brief as possible
>because as I said I've asked the question purely out
>of idle curiosity.
>
>
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