[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
> 

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