Singular or plural?

[Randy Alexander]

On Thu, Dec 31, 2009 at 10:58 PM, James Smith
<jsmithjamessmith at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 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. Â Might this perhaps indicate a singular noun form was once in use?

Dropping the plural form when a noun is in modifier function is
normal, e.g. "pant leg".  There are a few exceptions to this, but it's
the norm.

Randy

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



--
Randy Alexander
Jilin City, China
Blogs:
Manchu studies: http://www.bjshengr.com/manchu
Chinese characters: http://www.bjshengr.com/yuwen

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