Singular or plural?

[James Smith]

Of course it's not quite the same thing because it's a compound adjective, but "barrack room" is fairly common; e.g., Kipling's "Barrack Room Ballads", barrack-room lawyer, barrack room brawl and so forth.  Might this perhaps indicate a singular noun form was once in use?

James D. SMITH               |If history teaches anything
South SLC, UT                |it is that we will be sued
jsmithjamessmith at yahoo.com   |whether we act quickly and
                                    decisively
                             |or slowly and cautiously.


--- On Tue, 12/29/09, Randy Alexander <strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM> wrote:

> From: Randy Alexander <strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Re: Singular or plural?
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Date: Tuesday, December 29, 2009, 6:32 PM
> On Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 8:38 AM, Herb
> Stahlke <hfwstahlke at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Strictly in terms of raw googits, for what it's worth,
> "barracks (was
> > or is)" gets 5 million; "barracks (were or are) gets
> 6.18 million.
>
> More evidence that this is a noun with identical singular
> and plural forms.
>
> > My
> > guess is that there isn't much difference in the
> frequency of singular
> > vs. plural uses. Â Without a determiner, as in "New
> barracks *was/were
> > built," plural is necessary, but with a definite
> article, "the Marine
> > barracks was bombed," singular works. Â Barracks
> belongs to one of
> > several classes of noun that grammars list as
> sometimes or always
>
> Sometimes or always?
>
> > taking singular verbs and allowing the indefinite
> article, but these
> > lists rarely include any explanation beyond possible
> membership, e.g.,
>
> The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language has a pretty
> exhaustive
> treatment of this, p333-54.
>
> > diseases (measles, mumps, rickets), games (checkers,
> darts, quoits
> > (what's a quoit)),
>
> A quoit is a ring (about 10cm or so in diameter) often used
> for a
> ring-toss-like game.
>
> > miscellaneous other terms (barracks, scissors,
> > shears).
>
> Scissors/shears are different than barracks, because while
> you can say
>  "two barracks", you cannot say "two scissors/shears", but
> rather "two
> pairs of scissors/shears".  Scissors/shears are
> therefore plural
> uncount nouns, along with clothes, pants, munitions,
> etc.  They are
> uncount because they cannot be used with numbers.
>
> > A few years ago a graduate student of mine did his
> > dissertation on the treatment of words like these by
> different social
> > groups and found considerable variation both within
> and across groups.
> >
> > Herb
> >
> > On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 3:14 PM, Bill Palmer <w_a_palmer at bellsouth.net>
> wrote:
> > > In a story reporting the location of prior chief
> executives at times of =
> > > national crisis (occasioned by the recent attempt
> to bomb a NWA flight), =
> > > CBS reported, "President Reagan was on vacation
> when the Marine barracks =
> > > in Beirut were bombed in 1983". Â I would have
> used "was". Â But I don't =
> > > really know which is appropriate.
>
> --
> Randy Alexander
> Jilin City, China
> Blogs:
> Manchu studies: http://www.bjshengr.com/manchu
> Chinese characters: http://www.bjshengr.com/yuwen
>
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