Re: Missing Singulars

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

>
> 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
>

Well I must concede that I didn't do a study of all English written
material before I made that statement. It was a hypothesis, a guess
trying to account for your examples, and the only evidence I have when
writing quickly like this is my memory. Google has access to such a
vast reserve of information that one is bound to find examples that go
against what I said. However, I am not yet convinced that these
examples represent the _most_ usual English usage, which is what I
hoped to describe. I based the hypothesis fundamentally on an
observation I have made that "bid" in the meaning "attempt" seems to
be spreading beyond just newspaper headlines, where I believe this
meaning originated. I'll check the OED after I submit this to see if
this meaning of "bid" is more ancient than that.

Andrew