Corpora: corpi

[sheri lyn pargman]

Ramesh Krishnamurthy wrote:

>1.9 "corpi" derives the plural form from the wrong Latin declensional
>paradigm. But hey, we are participating in the creation of the English
>of the future here, not correcting people's knowledge or ignorance of
>Latin. If in 100 years' time, consensus use prefers "corpi", what's
>the problem?

I just wanted to add to Ramesh's very insightful words that the use of
"corpi" as the plural of "corpus"  is similar to the (common in the
U.S.) use of "octopi" as the plural of "octopus" (the Latin plural is
"octopodes"). You also sometimes hear in the U.S. "lexi" as
the plural of the new coinage "lexus" (the car), and note that
"syllabi" is the "non-historical" plural of "syllabus." The point here is
that all of these plurals are the result of analogy, a very common form
of morphological change. Thus, the morphological relationship between
Latin forms such as

focus	:	foci
radius	:	radii
nucleus	:	nuclei

has been analogically extended in English to other Latin-sounding forms,
such as

octopus	:	octopi
corpus	:	corpi

As far as I can tell, these are perfectly fine plurals in English -- I
seriously doubt that most native speakers of English would have trouble
understanding that "corpi" is the plural of "corpus."

-Sheri Pargman
Ph.D. student in the Dept. of Linguistics at the (I hope still) "highly
regarded" University of Chicago

On Thu, 5 Apr 2001, PFranklin wrote:

> I chose to hire a recent MA in Linguistics (BA, too) graduate from the
> highly regarded University of Chicago as a substitute ESL teacher. On his
> first day of work, he came up with "corpi."  A few weeks later he left
> without giving notice, and I can't say I was displeased.
>
> Philip Franklin, Director,
> Social Sciences Institute English Preparatory Program
> Istanbul Bilgi University
> Inonu Cd. No. 28 (Y 436)
> Kustepe - Sisli
> Istanbul 80310 TURKEY
> tel: 90-212-216-2222 x 466
> fax: 90-212-216-2536
> pfranklin at bilgi.edu.tr
> philip.franklin at usa.net