[Ads-l] Dropped plurals

[Jonathan Lighter]

That's "consonant-cluster reduction."

How ironic for me.

JL

On Fri, Sep 16, 2016 at 7:59 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> It's commonly cited as a feature of "consonan-cluster reduction" in
> African-American vernacular, but the students I'm thinking of were white
> Southerners.
>
> JL
>
> On Fri, Sep 16, 2016 at 7:55 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> This has been going on for decades - if not longer. I had a number of
>> students in the '70s who would write "dentist" and so forth as plurals.
>>
>> I can remember one who temporarily resisted correction, because "There
>> isn't any S!"
>>
>> JL
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 15, 2016 at 4:55 PM, Katherine W. Stewart <
>> katherine.whitworth at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Long-time listener, first-time caller. I am in Arkansas, and in the last
>>> couple of years I have noticed the plural -s being dropped in speech from
>>> words ending in -st ("guest" and "artist" are two that come up a lot; I
>>> heard a plural "enthusiast" for the first time earlier today). And I get
>>> it: Some people find -sts unpleasant to pronounce. But recently, I have
>>> started to see this written—online, in e-mails, on signs, in text
>>> messages,
>>> etc. The instances I've collected indicate demographic diversity.
>>>
>>> Is this happening everywhere? Has it been going on for long? Is there any
>>> significance in the leap (if it has been a leap) from speech to print?
>>> (Ex., many people who take the "probly" shortcut in speech still spell
>>> the
>>> whole word out in print.) Just curious.
>>>
>>> Katherine W. Stewart
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> 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."
>>
>
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>



-- 
"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