e2pandas

I'm the last guy in the world anyone would consider to be a spelling freak or a grammar (whoops, almost spelled it with an "e" again) nazi. My love of reading the written word is long established, it's just that I'm not that stringent on how the stuff is actually written (my vitriolic hatred for instant messaging abbreviations notwithstanding). But sometimes I come across a certain grammar rule that never fails to bring a smile to my face and a little joy in my heart. One that I almost always feel the need to repeat out loud to myself and let the beautiful words roll off my tongue. This is when someone has to pluralize a postpositive adjective.

"Well what the hell does that mean, you weirdo?" you ask me. Well, a postpositive adjective is one that is actually placed after the noun it modifies. When you want to make something like this plural, it is proper that the noun is made plural and not the adjective. So when you want to say something like "I think that Edwin Meese III was the worst of all of our nation's many Attorneys General," it is correct to put the s at the end of Attorney, as the word General is a reference to the breadth of that job and it modifies the noun Attorney.

This rule then leads to pluralizations like:

• Attorneys, Secretaries, Surgeons and Postmasters General
• courts-martial
• brothers-in-law
• passers-by
• iPods Nano
• Coca-Colas Classic
• Volkswagens Jetta
• Robert Downeys Jr.

Why do I like this so much? I think it's because it sounds so utterly pompous (Such as in the Onion article about William Safire ordering two Whoppers Junior) and I always enjoy a chance to inject an absurd affectation into my otherwise low-culture life.

Recently it seems that this style is dying out, as much of the media seems intent on doing it the better-sounding (albeit incorrect) way by making the end of the phrase plural, no matter what kind of word it is. Indeed, I have even seen some dictionaries that list "Attorney Generals" as a proper alternative plural form

Join me, brothers and sisters, in keeping proper postpositive pluralization alive. Think before you place that "s"

DrSeudo says culs-de-sac! ne'ers-do-well! oscars the grouch!

It was one of those grey winter evenings that always put English in a pensive and somewhat dejected frame of mind, making her feel as though she were very small and insignificant. The way the cold wind battered at the window panes reminded her of how harsh and unforgiving the universe could be, of how, ultimately, she too would die, and it would be as if she were never even born. She sighed, stretched, and sullenly exclaimed, “God help me, I’m in such a subjunctive mood today!”

“It is important, at times like these, that my accomplishments be remembered,” she cautioned herself, trying to boost her self-confidence. After all, if she were not around, so many great works of literature wouldn’t be either, from Shakespeare’s plays to the poetry of Charles Bukowski. If there were some alternate dimension, in which English had never come to be, it would be, literarily, a much poorer world than this one. The future was uncertain, but come what may, she would always remember the thrill of her very own vocabulary and syntax being built into subtle lines and intricate prose, strange plots and bawdy tales, fierce slogans of revolution and humble little nursery rhymes.

But today all that grandeur felt somehow hollow, and she couldn’t help but think of what her life would have been like if she were someone else. What if she were Russian, with flexible syntax and a Slavic soul, keeping Dostoyevsky company on those long cold nights he spent journeying into the heart of man? Or imagine if she were Mandarin Chinese, with that musical tonality, those whispery affricatives, and tens of thousands of vivid characters to illustrate her every word! Sometimes, she even longed for the simple, quiet life she would have had if she were some obscure language of New Guinea, spoken by a single highland tribe, instead of the sprawling global tongue that spawned ideas like ‘cyberspace’ and ‘ethnic cleansing.’

And so it went: despite her efforts to cheer up, she found herself forlornly wishing that she were someone else, anyone else. “I can only hope,” she said to herself, in a soft, sad voice, “that my mood be more indicative tomorrow.”

In English, these bear the inflectional categories of number, case, gender, and person. There are several subclasses of pronouns and they all behave and look quite differently:

Personal Pronouns

They distinguish participants in the speech event (e.g., speaker vs. addressee). They are what usually comes to mind first when we talk about pronouns.

e.g. I, we, you, y'all, he, she, it, they

Reflexive Pronouns

These are closely related to personal pronouns. They are easily identified because they end in self or selves. They commonly mark an object that refers to the same person as the subject.

e.g. Timmy hurt himself. We gave ourselves a present.

Demonstrative Pronouns

These typically "point out" the things they modify. They can be used to distinguish things on the basis of closeness to the speaker. Sometimes they stand by themselves.

e.g. That is a lie. I like those.

Interrogative Pronouns

These are question words, including who, which and what.

Indefinite Pronouns

These are pronouns that refer to non-specific entities. They may appear in combination with a noun, but more commonly appear alone.

e.g. some, somebody, every, everyone, each, anybody, nobody, none

Relative Pronouns

These introduce relative clauses. They look like other pronouns but they function differently.

e.g. I found a friend who likes cheese. The book that I read is on the table.

To start off, pull up the IPA for reference. We also need to get some terminology out of the way:

• "phoneme = contrastive/distinctive sound within a particular language (notation: /…/)."
• "allophone (or variant) = sound which counts as an alternative way of saying a phoneme in a particular language (notation: […])."
• minimal pair = a set of words that differ in only one sound.

In linguistics, solving a phonemic analysis problem entails determining whether or not two sounds are assignable to two different phonemes. If not, you must specify whether they are allophones in complimentary distribution, or free variation. When allophones are in complimentary distribution, they appear in different environments within the language. For example, between the sounds [ð] and [d] in Osage, the Siouan language of a Native American people who originally lived in what is now western Missouri, [d] is only found before the sound [a]. [ð] is found everywhere else a 'd-like' sound is used (forgive me for the informal term). On the otherhand, allophones in free variation are generally attributable to a regional accent. Gritchka points out the example of [k] sound at the end of 'pack'. It may be said with an aspiration, an explosion of air on that last sound in the word, notated like this [k^h]. Or it may be said with a half-long unreleased [k`] sound. Despite their different sounds, the meaning of the word remains the same.

What follows is an algorithm of sorts (in the vein of the old choose your own adventure books) for solving phonemic analysis problems:

• Beginning with two sounds from a language and a finite data set of words containing one or both of those sounds...

1. Is there a minimal pair for the given sounds? If yes, go to 2. If not, go to 5.


2. Do the words in the pair differ in meaning? If yes, go to 3. If not, go to 4.


3. The sounds are contrastive, i.e. separate phonemes.


4. The sounds are allophones in free variation.


5. Describe the phonetic environment in which each sound appears; e.g. list what comes before and after each sound. Do the sounds occur in the same (or similar) environments, or are their environments complementary? If same/similar, go to 6. If complementary, go to 7.


6. The sounds contrast so your best guess is that they're separate phonemes, and you'd expect to find minimal pairs with more data.


7. The sounds represent allophones of a single phoneme.

Example Problem:

Czech is a West Slavic language of the Indo-European language family, spoken in the Czech Republic. In Czech, among the various stops (plosives) are two alveo-dental stops,[t] and [d], articulated by the tongue tip against the boundary between the upper incisors and the alveolar ridge behind them, and two palatal stops,[t^y] and [d^y]. To how many phonemes are these four sounds assignable? Consider the data below and support your conclusion.

1. dej = 'give!'
2. d^yed^yit = 'to inherit'
3. d^yej = 'action'
4. d^yelo = 'cannon'
5. kotel = 'kettle'
6. kot^ye = 'kitten'
7. tedi = 'hence'
8. tele = 'calf (animal)'
9. t^yelo = 'body'
10. teta = 'aunt'
11. tikat = 'to be on a first-name basis'
12. titul = 'title'
13. t^yikat = 'to tick (clock)'
14. vada = 'flaw'
15. vana = 'bathtub'
16. vata = 'absorbent cotton'

Step 1 - List any minimal pairs.

• 1 and 3
• 4 and 9
• 11 and 13
• 14 and 16

The words in all of the pairs differ in meaning.

All of the four Czech stops, [t, d, t^y, d^y], are separate phonemes, /t, d, t^y, d^y/, because they contrast.

Sources: Anthro/Ling 2040, http://www.spectrum.uni-bielefeld.de/~thies/HTHS/phonrules.html