[Ads-l] From a headline:

[Geoffrey Nathan]

The issue of whether the first noun in a compound can be inflected has been researched intensively since Lexical Phonology was developed (and probably before that too). The constraint against plurals exists in American English, but notably not in British English,where phrases like 'jobs bill' and 'drugs campaign' are old hat.

Apologies if this is garbled in some way--can't seem to stop that.

Also, +1 to Mark Mandel.

Geoff


Geoffrey S. Nathan
WSU Information Privacy Officer (Retired)
Emeritus Professor, Linguistics Program
http://blogs.wayne.edu/proftech/

geoffnathan at wayne.edu

Nobody at Wayne State will EVER ask you for your password. Never send it to anyone in an email, no matter how authentic the email looks.

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From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
Sent: Sunday, March 22, 2020 8:32 AM
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Subject: Re: From a headline:

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The latest example of the hypercorrect faux plural. (I've already recorded
the disbelief of my 2002 intro linguistics class that news anchors   had
started saying routinely "the jobs market."  The trend s now endemic.

Anyway, there's more than one woman in the band, right?  And more than one
job on the market.

(I suppose we should say, '"more than one job available," since no "job"
can logically be "on [top of]" a [figurative] market.  Put the logic back
in language!.)

JL

On Sun, Mar 22, 2020 at 5:42 AM Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> "The All-_Women_ Mariachi Group"
>
> Shouldn't that be "the all-_woman_ mariachi group"? Or should one of the
> wonders of my lost youth have been "Phil Spitalny and his All-_Girls_
> Orchestra" and not "... his All-_Girl_ Orchestra"? Or is this one of those
> changes like the shift of e.g. American "this, that, and the other" to
> British "this, that and the other." Or should that be, '... and the
> other'.?
>
>
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


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