[Ads-l] hypercorrect pluralization of attributives

[Jonathan Lighter]

CNN is talking about "the Houthis rebels."

I've recently heard "the movies industry."

Plus (I hope you're sitting down) "the aircrafts industry."


JL



On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 1:11 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: hypercorrect pluralization of attributives
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 9:29 AM -0700 3/30/09, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
> >On Mar 30, 2009, at 7:41 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> >>
> >
> >>At 3/30/2009 09:40 AM, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
> >>
> >>>not ridiculous or incorrect, much less hypercorrect.  *the name of
> >>>the
> >>>dice game* is "craps".  you "shoot craps".  "crap game" would be
> >>>absurd, like "jack game", "measle infection", etc.
> >>>
> >>>see the OED entry for "craps".  of obscure origin (not obviously
> >>>related to "crap" 'feces'),
> >>
> >>But, as I learned, the OED also has "crap" and "crap game".
> >
> >ack.  i somehow missed that.
> >
> >i would interpret "crap game" as a re-shaping of "craps game",
> >accommodating the expression to the usual pattern for N-N compounds.
> >
> >i'm starting to find more such re-shapings.  i get small numbers of
> >hits for {"measle infection"} and {"mump infection"}, for instance.
> >
> >meanwhile, Joel Berson has pointed out to me that the OED has an entry
> >for "eave", back-formed from "eaves", with citations from 1789.  the -
> >s of "eaves" was not originally a mark of the plural, but in modern
> >english the word is standardly plural in its syntax, and that led to
> >the creation of a singular "eave".
>
> A case of "eaves" dropping, then.  And a nice addition to the
> "kudo(s)", "pea(s(e))" stock.
>
> LH
>
> >   though many sources (like CGEL)
> >treat "eaves" as invariably plural, back-formed "eave" turns out to be
> >pretty frequent these days; a google search on {"to the eave"} turned
> >up plenty of examples -- many of them with "eave" as the first element
> >in a N-N compound (like "eave strut"), but many of them not.
> >
> >arnold
> >
> >------------------------------------------------------------
> >The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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