In a message dated 7/30/06 11:21:16 AM, [log in to unmask] writes:
Could you clarify your comments? Which of my replies to Bill are you referencing? I don't remember ever writing: "trifling matters such as irregular plurals." This doesn't even sound like me; irregular plurals are more interesting to me than trifling (as Sir Toby Belch, I even get to speak one: "A plague on these pickled herring" -- no '-s' -- I love it!).
Also, which of Bill's points did I seem to fail to understand?
For the second time in the last few weeks, I have confused Paul and Phil, who, as far as I know, have nothing more in common than the first letter of their name. My apologies to both. I don't know either of you and certainly didn't mean to attribute to Paul the ideas I was disputing.
Phil had written, in response to a post by Bill,
. . . you demonstrated yourself incapable of understanding. Read my comments again. I'll repeat briefly which may help.
The discoverability of nounness and verbness is sufficiently demontrated by the regularity of their occurance with plurals and tense respectively. Trifling matters such as irregular plurals and such simply do not change the fact that plurals occur only with nouns and tense only with verbs.
It was to this comment that I wrote the following:
" Paul's [but I meant Phil's] reply seems to indicate his failure to understand the points Bill made rather than the other way around. Bill did not mention "trifling matters such as irregular plurals." He pointed out that large classes of words that are normally considered nouns are not pluralizable, which is quite different from being "irregular" in the formation of their plurals. "
There is enough heat on this list without posters stirring up the flames even further by confusing the members, and for having done that, I apologize.
Peter Adams
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