tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jan 13 16:41:51 2006
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Re: easy question
On Fri, 13 Jan 2006 15:01:51 -0600, Steven Boozer wrote:
>What do we call them in English (e.g. child vs. children; person vs. people)?
In English, IIRC, nouns that form their plural regularly by adding
-(e)s are "weak," and those that form their plural by adding -(e)n
(and sometimes also with an internal sound change) are "strong":
child/children, cow/kine, ox/oxen, brother/brethren, shoe/shoen, etc.
When one word of totally different etymology is used as the inflected
form of another, it's called "suppletion." Some examples from
English are go/went (from an old past-tense form of "wend"),
good/better/best, bad/worse/worst, etc.
As I understand it, person vs. people is a case of incomplete
suppletion: while "people" doesn't have a singular form (*"one
people"), "person" does have a regular plural in addition to
"people": "two persons."
Technically, though, I don't think we can call {DoS}/{ray'} a case of
suppletion unless we know for a fact that the two words aren't
cognate. They certainly *look* different, but because we don't know
the details of their etymologies, we can't say for certain that
they're an example of suppletion.
>I think just "irregular" is the simplest.
I think not only being the simplest, it's may also be the safest
thing to say, at least until we know more about Klingon etymology.
>BTW, how do we refer to singular vs. plural nouns at all? I though of
>using with {law'} "be many" but realized that {DIp law'} doesn't mean "a
>plural noun", but "many nouns".
Segh cha'DIch mojaq ghaj[be']bogh DIp...?
If I've misstated anything, I hope someone will correct me.
-- Stephen Carter
[email protected]
Nagoya, Japan
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