#plurals

The plural of "dwarf" is often "dwarves," especially quoting Tolkien, but "dwarfs" is preferred and slightly more common. Tolkien's spelling is gaining, however, possibly as the "Lord of the Rings" sense is seen more often with the medical or nonmythological sense now considered offensive.

Lots of other words ending in -f or -fe take a -ves plural: wives, calves, loaves, shelves, knives. But for more than one roof, just add s.

#words #tips #plurals #amediting

Spoken, the plural of "roof" rhymes with either "proofs" or, especially in the UK, "hooves." But it's always spelled "roofs." The written plural "rooves," is rare, especially in the past 300 years.

The plural of "hoof" can be "hoofs" or "hooves," with "hooves" now the more common form, but only for the past 50 years.

#words #tips #plurals #amediting

Yo, question for my #PluralSystem friends out there:

How do you handle differences in religious beliefs within your system?

Please boost & comment with any additional hashtags for the #plural #plurals community

NYTimes insisting that "National Archives" is a singular noun is giving me an aneurysm.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/07/14/us/national-archives-documents-preservation.html

#plurals #singular #pluralization #words

@aral

In that spirit I’ll ask about something that’s been vexing me… #hashtags

How does #Mastodon handle #plurals?

Example: #bird vs #birds

Must I always include both? Does #birds include sub-tag #bird? (Appears not to.)

Are there best practices or policies for this?

I haven’t found any documentation online.

A link or a pointer would help…

Thanks!

Hi y'all! I'm Siyeh.

I'm on team zebra with #hEDS #EDS and I have #LongCovid which manifests in symptoms resembling #POTS and #MECFS

I'm the only remaining member of a #system, but still remain informed by #multiplicity and have friendships with many #plurals on/offline

I'm #trans and #neurodivergent and most of my friends and loved ones are too!

I have several low vision/blind/Deaf pals and spend a lot of time reconciling conflicting access needs while organizing for #DisabilityJustice

If various family connections have you eating multiple turkey dinners next week, are you attending thankssgiving? @grammargirl #plurals

Children’s awareness of irregular verbs

I’ve been enjoying Steven Pinker’s Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language (1999). More technical and focused than his popular bestseller The Language Instinct, it is effectively a monograph on linguistic irregularity, examining in particular how we inflect verbs for past tense and plurality, and what the exceptions can tell us about the structure of language and our minds.

In chapter 7, ‘Kids Say the Darnedest Things’, Pinker points out that children sometimes know that the mistakes they make are mistakes. He cites Dan Slobin and Tom Bever, psycholinguists who inserted their children’s speech errors into their own speech and recorded the results:

TOM: Where’s Mommy?
CHILD: Mommy goed to the store.
TOM: Mommy goed to the store?
CHILD: NO! (annoyed) Daddy, I say it that way, not you.

CHILD: You readed some of it too . . . she readed all the rest.
DAN: She read the whole thing to you, huh?
CHILD: Nu-uh, you read some.
DAN: Oh, that’s right, yeah, I readed the beginning of it.
CHILD: Readed? (annoyed surprise) Read! (pronounced rĕd)
DAN: Oh yeah, read.
CHILD: Will you stop that, Papa?

Pinker infers from this, and from the evidence of more controlled studies, that children know irregular forms better than we might suppose; as they progressively master these forms, their errors are ‘slip-ups in which they cannot slot an irregular form into a sentence in real time’. Adults make similar slips, though nowhere near as often.

The main points of Words and Rules are set out in a short lecture (PDF) of the same name, while the London Review of Books has a critical review by Charles Yang.

#affixation #affixes #books #children #grammar #language #languageAcquisition #linguistics #morphology #plurals #psycholinguistics #psychology #speech #speechErrors #StevenPinker #tense