LINGUIST List 12.2558

Sat Oct 13 2001

Qs: Aligned Arabic-Eng Text, Use of 's for Plural

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Directory

  1. Bud Scott, Aligned Arabic-English text
  2. Phil Gaines, 's for plural

Message 1: Aligned Arabic-English text

 Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2001 14:36:57 -0400
From: Bud Scott <bscott22verizon.net>
Subject: Aligned Arabic-English text


Can anyone direct me to where I might obtain aligned Arabic-English
text? 

Thanks in advance.

Bud Scott
Parse International, Inc.
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Message 2: 's for plural

 Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2001 14:59:02 +0000
From: Phil Gaines <gainesenglish.montana.edu>
Subject: 's for plural

Has anyone written or presented on the phenomenon--some might prefer to call
it epidemic--of an increasing use of 's to form the plural? Sites at which
I've noticed this a lot are signage and webpages. Today, for example, I
passed a sign that said "Three taco's for $2.00." Perhaps there is a
plausible analysis dealing with patterns in orthography--possibly correlated
with phonological rules--but I prefer to think that this is a language
change phenomenon with a purely pragmatic/functional motivation, perhaps a
disambiguation device, i.e. an emphasis of the plural in cases where the
apostrophe-less word would tend to foreground another meaning. I'm
speculating; is there any analysis out there?

Philip Gaines
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