[Ads-l] From a headline:

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Sun Mar 22 17:56:00 UTC 2020


>  I will no longer respond in any detail to fresh complaints about N + N
compounds with plural-marked first elements.

Get a grip.

JL

On Sun, Mar 22, 2020 at 1:47 PM Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu>
wrote:

> 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
>


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

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