{"id":9006,"date":"2021-05-06T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-06T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9006"},"modified":"2021-06-23T08:11:02","modified_gmt":"2021-06-23T12:11:02","slug":"a-plague-of-plurals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9006","title":{"rendered":"A Plague of Plurals"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Belfast,<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

English with all its aberrations in spelling and pronunciation is fairly simple when it comes to forming plurals (with innumerable exceptions, of course). For most nouns, you can feel pretty safe just adding -s<\/em> or -es <\/em>and be done with it. My daughter arrived at that conclusion by age three, and, one day when she was getting dressed asked for her \u201cclo.\u201d Once you\u2019ve tacked on that \u201cs,\u201d you switch to a plural verb. Easy, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Orrin Hargraves in his current Language Lounge column for Visual Thesaurus<\/em> points out two classes of exceptions. One is the group of words that in earlier English ended in -ik<\/em> (physik, magike) or the French -ique<\/em>. In modern English these words generally end in –ic<\/em> or –ics<\/em>. Having that \u201cs\u201d doesn\u2019t automatically call for a plural verb, though (\u201cPhysics is beyond me\u201d). And sometimes, it depends. He gives the example of \u201coptics.\u201d If you\u2019re talking about the field of study, it\u2019s acts like the word physics and takes a singular verb: \u201cOptics explores light and vision.\u201d But if you\u2019re talking about any number of events in our recent political history, it calls for a plural verb: \u201cThe optics were bad.\u201d The ethics too, sometimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A second strangely interesting group of nouns that are plural (that is, end in \u201cs\u201d) whose verbs are tricky have to do with disease and illness. (Why? Is this a philosophical question?) Measles, mumps, the bends, rickets, smallpox (plural of pock), yaws are among Hargraves\u2019s examples. An attack of any of these conditions usually has multiple effects (not just one measly measle), yet they take a singular verb. The whole things is simpler if you refer to \u201ca case of measles\/smallpox\/the bends,\u201d with \u201ccase\u201d taking a singular verb, unequivocally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But singular verb isn\u2019t a universal solution here. He takes up conditions in which the noun is plural (hiccups, shakes, sneezes) and takes a plural verb too\u2014no \u201cMy hiccups is embarrassing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In reading, I frequently run across passages where the author\/editor allowed themselves to be distracted by a prepositional phrase, in sentences such as \u201cThe group of teenagers are celebrating.\u201d Clearly the subject is \u201cgroup,\u201d a collective noun, not \u201cteenagers,\u201d and in American English, collective nouns are singular and usually take singular verbs. However, British and American English differ on this question. Other collectives are class, family, jury, staff, and team. I never have become comfortable with \u201cthe staff is,\u201d and don\u2019t trust myself to get it right, so usually amend the phrase to \u201cthe staff members are<\/em>.\u201d That workaround also helps with \u201cmembers of the press,\u201d \u201cfamily members,\u201d and in other situations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The word \u201cnumber\u201d presents its own challenges. It\u2019s correct to say, \u201cA<\/em> number of us are<\/em> . . .\u201d but \u201cThe<\/em> number of victims is<\/em> . . .\u201d The former example refers to an undefined, possibly malleable number of people; the latter refers to a specific integer, even if the precise number is unknown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, I\u2019m happy to have cleared that up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo: Writer’s Square, Belfast. Copyright, Albert Bridge; creative commons license<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

English with all its aberrations in spelling and pronunciation is fairly simple when it comes to forming plurals (with innumerable exceptions, of course). For most nouns, you can feel pretty safe just adding -s or -es and be done with … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"A Plague of Plurals - Should be the easiest thing, right? Not with these maladies!\n\n","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[174,51,29],"tags":[188],"class_list":["post-9006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-draft-blog","category-words","category-writing","tag-visual-thesaurus"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2lg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9006"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9007,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9006\/revisions\/9007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}