| Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993. |
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| RELIC PLURALS OF NOUNS |
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| Besides the regular pattern for making plurals (see PLURALS OF NOUNS), English has kept some Old English relic plurals, because the words are so common, with such high frequency of use. These are the most common of the relics: (1) A small number of words add the sound z or iz to the stem after changing the final stem consonant sound: house/houses; calf/calves (and a handful of other words); path/paths (and a few other words). Note that of these sound changes, only the calf/calves shift is reflected in the spelling too. (2) A few words, mostly the names of animals, have an unchanging singular and plural form: sheep, deer, fish (which has a regular plural as well, fishes), quail, etc. There may be some slight semantic distinctions between the meaning of the unchanging plural and the regular one, as in the instance of fish/fishes. (3) In three words, the plural adds a syllable including the sound in: child/children; ox/oxen; and brother/brethren (although brother also has a regular plural, brothers, and there is a semantic distinction between the two). (4) A few Old English relics make their plurals through an internal vowel change: man/men, woman/women, foot/feet, goose/geese, and mouse/mice. Note that these are all closed lists of words; we do not add new ones except in jest based on analogy (house/hice and mongoose/mongeese, for example). | 1 |
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| | | The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. Copyright © 1993 Columbia University Press. |
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