ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis) (06/20/85)
>There is probably some language that has contributed to English that uses a >suffix "en" to denote a plural.. -- Ben Cranston --- >The "en" suffix is a German pluralization, which has leaked over into English >in words such as "oxen". -- Morris Keesan --- >Actually, rather than leaking into English from German, -en plurals is a >feature of Old English, which has only survived in 3 words: children, >brethren and oxen. It is a common feature of Germanic languages, and still >survives in, for example, German and Dutch. -- Steven Pemberton --- >The -en of vixen is the -in of modern German: a feminine suffix-Col.Sicherman The influence of German on English has been practically nil -- and there seems to be little reason to doubt that the plurals oxen, children, and brethren are the last representatives of the once huge -n- (`weak') noun declension. The anglo-saxon words with irregular plurals have historically been among those words learned at the earliest age in a child's life (man, woman, child, foot, tooth). The presence of farmyard animals among these words (ox, goose, sheep, mouse) is natural enough when we consider the fascination of 2-4 year old child for the animals that would have inhabited the typical English village in medieval times. Why some common nouns retained their irregularity (foot/feet) and some did not (eye/eyen,eyren => eyes) is anyone's guess, however. BTW, the forms (children, brethren) are historically double plurals -- since (childer, brether) already represent plurals in -r- and by `umlaut' (a vowel change like o=>e), respectively. The `null plural', as in `five deer', has extended to become an alternate plural applicable to all animals. Other Teutonic languages use all these ways to make plurals, in some cases linking the plural suffix with grammatical gender -- a feature lost in English but fully retained in German (masculine/feminine/neuter), and partially retained in Dutch and Swedish (common/neuter): Plural English German Dutch Swedish -n - yes common neuter -r - yes neuter common -s usually - yes - umlaut rare yes yes yes null animals yes yes neuter Umlaut was caused by the a following i-sound at an earlier period: Teut *fuhs- => OE fox- Teut *fuhs+in- => OE fyxen- => Kentish vixen (female fox) Teut *guld- => OE gold- Teut *guld+in- => OE gylden- => gilden Teut *manniz => OE men(n) The physiological explanation is that anticipation of a following front vowel modified the stem vowels {u,o,a} => {u:,o:,a:} (where `:' is German umlaut). In anglo-saxon, {o:,a:} => {e}, and {u:} was spelt `y', later merging with {i}. ============================================================================= English noun declension is very simple today: Regular Various Irregular Categories.. human man deer ox Pos human's man's deer's ox's Plur humans men deer oxen Pl-Pos humans' men's deers' oxen's The modern scheme derives from old masculines which had genitives (possessives) and plurals in -s; the modern genitive plural is a comparatively recent analogical formation. English in the middle ages had many dialects that were constantly in flux. Possessives were not always in -s, and plurals were made with -s,-r,-n,-e and umlaut. A huge amount of vocabulary from French and Latin tended to be incorporated into the most numerous class, namely those with plurals/possessives in -es. M N F MFN N MF wolf deer womb oxe child man Gen wolfes deeres wombe(s) oxe(n/s) childes mannes Plur wolfes deer(es) wombe(s) oxen childer men Between 1200-1700, inflexional -e- gradually became silent (except in certain contexts, as between sibilants eg: rosEs). The advance of {s} spread from the extremely common masculine declension to distinguish forms that would otherwise have become identical, and then continued to drive out everything else. In the process, gender was lost. Between ~800-1400, anglo-saxon's four-case system was reduced to two partly as a result of a leveling of all (unaccented) inflectional vowels to -e- and nasals n,m to -n, an event paralleled other Teutonic languages, though German and Icelandic have maintained all four cases, at least as written. The anglo-saxon noun classes were: Class: 1 2 3 3 4 5 6 7 Gender(s):M(N) F M(N) F M(FN) M(FN) N MF -s- `wolf' `care' `lie' `queen' `son' `ox' `child' `man' Nom wulf caru* lyge* cwen sunu* oxa* cild man Acc wulf care lyge* cwen sunu* oxan* cild man Dat wulfe care lyge cwene suna oxan cilde men Gen wulfes care lyges cwene suna oxan cildes mannes -p- Nom wulfas* cara lygas* cwene suna oxan cildru men Acc wulfas* cara lygas* cwene suna oxan cildru men Dat wulfum carum lygum cwenum sunum oxum cildrum mannum Gen wulfa cara lyga cwena suna oxena cildra manna * starred inflections have variants as described below: Class 1) Long stem neuters as: deor `deer' {NApl=deor} Short stem neuters as: heofod `head' {NApl=heofdu} Class 2) Long stem (feminines) drop -u: wamb `womb' Class 3) Long stem masculines drop -e: giest `guest' {NApl=giestas} Neuters as: spere `spear' {NApl=speru} Class 4) Long stem masculines drop -u: feld `field' Feminines as: duru `door', and with long stems: hand `hand' Class 5) Feminines as: tunge `tongue' Neuters as: eage `eye' {Acc=eage} Class 7) Likewise fot=>fet `foot', mus=>mys `mouse' --- Although the other Teutonic languages had categories similar to the ones above, none preferred -s as much as English, although it is possible that the Scandinavian -r represents a rhotacization of -s, rather than an extension of the -r- category. German behaved most consistently by losing the original IE plural -s everywhere. Note, incidentally, that -r and -n were not originally plural markers, but rather stem consonants that disappeared in the nominative singular. This -r- stem consonant actually derives from an -s-, a phenomenon also seen in Latin `opus', genitive `operis', plural `opera'. For those who know Latin, Greek, or Sanskrit, the seven anglosaxon classes roughly correspond to the IndoEuropean classes below: 1: IE -o- stems MN (Lat lupus, Gk lukos, Skt vrkas) 2: IE -A- stems F (Lat mensa, Gk khOrA) 3: IE -i- stems MFN (Lat hostis, Gk polis, Skt agnis) 4: IE -u- stems MFN (Lat cornu, Gk ikhthus) 5: IE -n- stems MFN (Lat nom{en,in-}, Gk akmOn, Skt nam{a,n-}) 6: IE -s- stems N (Lat gen{us,er-}, Gk gen{os,ou-} Skt janas-) 7: IE rootstems MFN (Lat pe{s,d-}, Gk p{ous,od-}, Skt pa{t,d-}) More later if there's interest.. -michael