Re[2]: [tied] Missing Singulars

At 5:17:58 PM on Friday, December 19, 2008, Andrew Jarrette
wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott"
> <BMScott@...> wrote:

>> At 3:34:42 PM on Friday, December 19, 2008, Andrew
>> Jarrette wrote:

>>> --- On Fri, 12/19/08, Brian M. Scott <BMScott@...>
>>> wrote:

>>>> It's not exclusively journalistic usage. A few minutes
>>>> with Google got me the following examples, none
>>>> journalistic.

>> [...]

>>> OK, but I think examples like the ones you have produced
>>> are reflections of a tendency for people to imitate
>>> journalistic usage. 

>> I see no reason to believe that there even *is* such a
>> tendency.

> When writing (which is what is found on Google) rather
> than speaking,

In fact several of the examples that I listed were written
transcriptions of the spoken word.

> sometimes people will use journalistic short forms to save
> time. "Ten cattle" is easier to write than "ten head of
> cattle", even though in speech they probably would say
> "ten cows" rather than "ten cattle".

'Ten cows' is even easier to write than 'ten cattle'.

> Just my opinion, you probably don't respect it or agree
> with it, but I don't think it's possible to definitively
> prove either my or your opinion about this.

Whether I agree or not is beside the point that I was
making, which is that so far as I can tell, it's an opinion
with no evidentiary basis.

Brian