Re: "people" is not the plural of "person" [was: Re: Is that right?]
- From: Bob Cunningham <exw6sxq@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 25 Dec 2005 16:33:23 GMT
On Tue, 20 Dec 2005 22:12:45 -0600, Lars Eighner
<usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> said:
> In our last episode,
> <jedhq1plbnvpug149n0vpua9on2cb6k916@xxxxxxx>, the lovely and
> talented Bob Cunningham broadcast on alt.usage.english:
> > On Tue, 20 Dec 2005 17:43:04 +0000 (UTC), Salvatore Volatile
> ><me@xxxxxxxxxxx> said:
> >> (Note: Sparky has contended that 'people' is not the
> >> plural of 'person'.)
> > I'll even contend it again:
> > "People" is not the plural of "person".
> > [...] "people" is used for the plural of "person" as an
> > alternative to "persons", but that doesn't make it the
> > plural of "person".
> > "Vehicles" can be used as an alternative to "cars", but that
> > doesn't make "vehicles" the plural of "car".
(I now realize that the "vehicles" vs "cars" was not a good
case in point, because a vehicle can be a car, an
agricultural tractor, or a big rig (articulated lorry?),
among other things.)
> Is there a point at which that might no longer be so? Or is it
> still "'Went' is used for the past tense of 'go,' but that
> doesn't make it the past tense of 'go'"?
If in standard English "go" had a regularly formed past
tense, then I would say that "went" was used as the past of
"go". If "be" had a full conjugation of its own, then I
would say that "am", "are" and "is" were used for tenses of
"be" rather than being tenses of "be".
Since "be" no longer has a full conjugation of its own in
standard English, I regard "am", "are", "be", and "is" as
tenses of the same verb, although I'm not sure which verb to
say that is, since the conjugation is derived from pieces of
the conjugations of three quite different verbs, and "be"
itself seems to exist only in the infinitive, the
subjective, and in forming the present participle.
Is "are" the second-person plural and singular of "is", or
is "is" the first-person singular of "are", or are they both
in some sense tenses of "be"?
To my mind, since "person" has a regularly formed plural,
"people" is not a plural of "person", but is used as such.
The relative frequencies of use of the two forms doesn't
influence that perception.
.
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