[Ads-l] From a headline:
Arnold M. Zwicky
zwicky at STANFORD.EDU
Sun Mar 22 17:47:09 UTC 2020
I will no longer respond in any detail to fresh complaints about N + N compounds with plural-marked first elements, as if these had not been discussed repeatedly over the years.
See this Page on my blog about "Compounds: plurals", linking to postings of mine, some of them summarizing the (very complex) state of the facts:
https://arnoldzwicky.org/linguistics-notes/compounds-plurals/
> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Re: From a headline:
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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
>
------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
More information about the Ads-l
mailing list