At 12:14:56 PM on Thursday, February 5, 2009, Andrew
Jarrette wrote:
[...]
> I don't know where German did get its few noun plurals in
> <-s>, maybe it's from the Seemannsprache you have
> mentioned, or from Mittelniederdeutsch, or perhaps French,
> since it seems to be commonest among words of foreign
> origin.
R. Priebsch & W.E. Collinson, _The German Language_, 3rd
edn., 1948, p. 204:
There was an Old Saxon plural in <-os> which was retained
in Low German till the twelfth century, but receded later
under the influence of High German, and it is not clear
how far it is the source of the modern plurals. We find a
recrudescence of <s>-forms in the Netherlands in the
thirteenth century followed by their reappearance in Low
German in the fourteenth, first of all in the 'nomina
agentis' in <-ere>. Then there was a new influx of
<s>-plurals from French from the seventeenth century
onward. Hence it is perhaps best to assign them in N.H.G.
to a foreign origin.
A more recent treatment might also point to English
influence.
Brian