[Lexicog] Re: lexical entries as singulars or plurals
Fritz Goerling
Fritz_Goerling at SIL.ORG
Sun Aug 21 13:47:23 UTC 2005
What ever happened to "buck" (dollar)?
How is it used?: "to get a bang for your buck", "a lot of buck", "to make a
fast buck"
(I even heard "twenny buck")
How would a lexical entry in a modern American English dictionary look like
that takes
singular and plural uses of the word (in the sense of "dollar" and "money")
look
like?
The former German currency "Mark" never had a plural. The British "quid"
seems to be
used in the singular nowadays to my knowledge: 15 quid. The "euro" is used
in the plural.
Can someone think of a catchy name for the "euro", like "buck" for the
"dollar" and "quid" f
or the British pound?
Fritz Goerling
An interesting English example came to my attention while I was driving
around town recently. "Sales" can be simply the plural of "sale", as in
"I made two sales (of houses, cars, etc.) today", but I noticed it on
a sign saying "Tucson Tire Sales", where the plural form indicates a
place where something is sold. Also, more abstractly, it can be used
as a field of work, as in "John is in accounting, Jim is in sales." It
would seem difficult to treat these usages as just the simple plural
of "sale", since the semantics don't work compositionally.
Rudy Troike
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lexicography/attachments/20050821/b2c3a487/attachment.htm>
More information about the Lexicography
mailing list