Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="tarchon" data-source="post: 326325" data-attributes="member: 5990">Is it?&nbsp; Which Latin verb rule is that?While it is true that nobody's forcing you not to say &quot;pegasuses,&quot; that doesn't make it sound any less clumsy.&nbsp; The Latin -us/-i plurals have probably held on longer in common use than most borrowed-word plurals just because English speakers often find multisyllabic singular forms ending in vowel+'s' to be a little awkward to pluralize, particularly if another 's' has directly preceded it.&nbsp; In fact, there is some tendency to overgeneralize the -i plural to words like &quot;octopus&quot;, &quot;virus&quot;, and &quot;apparatus&quot; (I've even heard &quot;thesi&quot; for the pl. of &quot;thesis&quot;) where it isn't historically supported.If you're a pure descriptivist, you have to accept that the -i plural is at least marginally generative, and if you're a prescriptivist, you clearly have accepted usage on the side of it as well.Plus from the descriptive side, it's obvious that pegasi is overwhelmingly preferred by common usage.&nbsp; Altavista searching (for English) &quot;pegasi&quot; AND NOT &quot;51 Pegasi&quot; AND NOT &quot;star&quot; (to eliminate astronomical references) gets 2989 pages vs. 158 for &quot;pegasuses,&quot; so the pegasi form is preferred at least 20 to 1.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="tarchon, post: 326325, member: 5990"] Is it? Which Latin verb rule is that? While it is true that nobody's forcing you not to say "pegasuses," that doesn't make it sound any less clumsy. The Latin -us/-i plurals have probably held on longer in common use than most borrowed-word plurals just because English speakers often find multisyllabic singular forms ending in vowel+'s' to be a little awkward to pluralize, particularly if another 's' has directly preceded it. In fact, there is some tendency to overgeneralize the -i plural to words like "octopus", "virus", and "apparatus" (I've even heard "thesi" for the pl. of "thesis") where it isn't historically supported. If you're a pure descriptivist, you have to accept that the -i plural is at least marginally generative, and if you're a prescriptivist, you clearly have accepted usage on the side of it as well. Plus from the descriptive side, it's obvious that pegasi is overwhelmingly preferred by common usage. Altavista searching (for English) "pegasi" AND NOT "51 Pegasi" AND NOT "star" (to eliminate astronomical references) gets 2989 pages vs. 158 for "pegasuses," so the pegasi form is preferred at least 20 to 1. [/QUOTE]

Verification