From: Brian M. Scott
Message: 62838
Date: 2009-02-05
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott"I can't: it isn't.
> <BMScott@...> wrote:
>> 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.
> Note the weasel word 'recrudescence'.
> The two gentlemen (a German and an Anglosaxon I suppose)There haven't been any Anglo-Saxons in centuries.
> can't show that the s-plural disappeared in Dutch whichAnd you know this without even having read the book!
> they really really want to do,
> and the Low German s-plural in their tale 'receded' andThe obvious reading of the passage is that it disappeared
> then 'reappeared' (note that they never commit themselves
> to stating that it disappeared).
>> Hence it is perhaps best to assign them in N.H.G. to aYou've shown nothing.
>> foreign origin.
> And as I have shown above there is no 'here', so their
> 'hence' is vacuous.
>> A more recent treatment might also point to EnglishFritz Tschirch, _Geschichte der deutschen Sprache_, 3.,
>> influence.
> Not really.