"lion" +/- "-s"

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Oct 27, 2008, at 7:31 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:

> At 10/27/2008 08:00 AM, Charles Doyle wrote:
>> Any of my listmates who watched "60 Minutes" last night will have
>> noticed that Scott Pelley, in his segment on Mozambique, employed a
>> zero-plural for 'lions' (consistently, and several times)--or,
>> rather, he regarded "lion" as a mass noun ("the reintroduction of
>> lion into the ecosystem"). The individual he was featuring (an
>> American) likewise referred to groups (or masses) as "hippo,"
>> "hyena," and "zebra."
>>
>> Of course, there's the zero-plural of "deer," by way of analogy,
>> along with optional "elk" and "buffalo." But is there a gereral
>> tendency to do that with (wild) animal names?
>
> I don't know about "tendency" -- that is, if their has been any
> change -- but rather "practice":  Definitely with fishes.  Many fish
> of one species are fish; more than one fish of different species are
> fishes.  "This koi pond has many carp".  (An introduction to coral
> reef fishes I once read addresses this point determinedly.)

the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language has a summary of "base
plurals" on pp. 1588-9, with five subsections, the first two of which
are of interest here.

(a) Nouns denoting edible and game fish: carp, cod, haddock, hake,
mackerel, perch, roach, salmon, trout, turbot.  "These (and others of
the same semantic class) almost always have base plurals."

(b) Nouns denoting game animals and birds, of three subtypes:

[i] bison, deer, grouse, moose, swine [base plural only]

[ii] elk, quail, reindeer [base or regular plural]

[iii] elephant, giraffe, lion, partridge, pheasant [base plural
restricted]

"Those in [iii] normally have a regular plural as the only
possibility ...; base plurals, however, are found in the context of
hunting and shooting (_They were hunting elephant_) or when referring
to collections of them (_a herd of elephant_).  It is arguable,
however, that the latter construction involves not a base plural, but
a special use of the singular in certain syntactic contexts
(comparable to the _six foot tall_ construction ...)."

i'll take up the 60 Minutes examples in another posting.

arnold

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