Re: Examples of particular nouns

Evan Kirshenbaum wrote: 
Lars Eighner <usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:


As a practical matter, "person" is the singular of "people" in this
sense and "people" is the plural of "person."  I cannot think of
many (or any) other nouns which are similar,



Googling for "suppletive plural" (which is what this phenomenon is
called) doesn't turn up any other examples in English.


but the verb "go" has been fused with another verb for its past
tense for a very long time.



Also "good"/"better"/"well", "bad"/"worse".  According to

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppletion

the conjucation of "be" comes from three verbs: "be" from IE "*bhu-";
"am", "is", and "are" from "*es-"; and "was" and "were" from "*wes-".

And 2-3 if these verbs can be seen in most European languages. For example:

"bhu"   German bin, bist; French fut, fût; Russian bil, budu;
"es"	German ist, sind; French est, sera; Russian yest';
"wes"	German war, gewesen.

--
Rob Bannister
.

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