Re: Missing Singulars

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

>
> At 8:05:40 PM on Friday, December 19, 2008, Andrew Jarrette wrote:
>
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott"
> > <BMScott@> wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >> I merely pointed out that as a matter of empirical fact
> >> 'I could care less' is today an acceptable idiom
> >> expressing indifference.
>
> > Who says that it is acceptable?
>
> Those who use it completely unselfconsciously. I rather
> suspect that they're a majority of the U.S. population; I
> don't know about the rest of the English-speaking world.
>
> [...]
>
> > How can anyone say who it is that decides what is proper
> > or acceptable or normal?
>
> You keep talking about proper English as if the notion were
> well-defined; I'm simply trying to get you to see
>
> > The president? The Queen? You and I are both dealing in
> > subjective territory, and we have a difference of
> > subjective opinion.
>
> I'm not arguing about a difference in subjective opinion;
> I'm objecting to the introduction of the irrelevant notion
> of 'proper English'. Miss Thistlebottom has little if any
> place in a discussion of how the language is actually used.
>
> As a child I internalized a great many of the prescriptive
> rules cooked up by 17th and 18th century grammarians. As a
> result, many violations of these rules simply sound ugly to
> me, even when the rule in question is an arbitrary one with
> no historical basis. I don't, however, pretend that this is
> anything more than a personal aesthetic judgement, or that
> proper English is anything other than a privileged range of
> lects.
>

(More than once I've been told that I am a snob.)

>
> > You agreed that you would probably not say "ten police",
> > but differ from me in saying that your speech is not
> > representative.
>
> I know damned well that it's not representative, in all
> sorts of ways.
>
> > OK not representative, but does that mean that the
> > standard is to say and write "ten police"?
>
> Of course not. This is a straw man: at some point I
> explicitly said that this seemed to be a minority usage.
>
> Brian
>

So woould you agree with the statement "<police> and <cattle> _can_ be
used as count nouns, but this is a minority usage" as a possible
settlement of the issue? (This is not meant to be a prescriptive
statement.) Perhaps the use of <cattle> as a count noun is not a
minority usage, perhaps it's widespread, I think especially when
tallying assets as opposed to counting animals in view.