"Revelations"

[Laurence Horn]

At 8:28 AM -0500 3/21/02, GSCole wrote:
>Another 'additional S' example.  Several years ago, in a discussion with
>workers in a large automobile factory, the workers consistently referred
>to the group of 'foremens' (it was 'men', not 'man').  Early on, to
>clarify what I thought that I was hearing, I would attempt a correction,
>e.g., "you mean 'foremen'?"  Only to receive a response of the sort,
>"no, the foremens, all of them (in that area of the plant)".  The plant
>is located in northern Delaware.
>
Interesting--but how could you tell it was "foremens" and not
"foremans"?  They would be homophones, wouldn't they?  If it's
"foremans", they're basically treating "foreman" as though it was a
single morpheme (cf. shamans, the Newmans, etc.) or, alternatively,
treating this -man as a different suffix from the one in "chairman",
"sportsman", etc.  In some cases you can tell there's a real double
plural, e.g. "teeths", "feets", but here you can't, at least in
speech.

larry