The plural of "moose" is ...

[Laurence Horn]

At 1:08 PM -0400 8/19/10, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>At 8/19/2010 10:58 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>"Hunting ducks in": about 218,000 estimated hits
>>"Hunting duck in":  50 actual hits
>>(a good number are irrelevant, of course, but Charlie's contrast
>>comes out pretty clearly)
>
>In contexts other than hunting (and/or ducks),

and/or eating, as in "I (don't) eat a lot of rabbit/chicken/goose/..."

>  does one often/rarely
>find a plural without the plural form, as for the word "fish"?  (I
>suspect this is virtually impossible to search for via Google.)
>
There are other contexts in which the "universal grinder" comes into
play--not just eating, but also wearing, driving over ("there's a lot
of ____ on the road"), and so on.  Of course, these involve true mass
uses, not singulars-as-plurals as in "There are many fish in the
sea/moose on the tundra" vs. *"There were many duck in the
sky/chicken in the coop/grasshopper in the field", so technically
they don't satisfy the search for "a plural without the plural form"
as in "fish" or "moose".

LH

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