Date: Mon, 13 Dec 1993 09:14:34 CST
From: salikoko mufwene mufw[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MIDWAY.UCHICAGO.EDU
Subject: Re: name that decade
In Message Sun, 12 Dec 1993 11:18:25 -0600,
Dennis Baron baron[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ux1.cso.uiuc.edu writes:
Last night at an end of term party someone asked me what
the name for the next decade will be. What, in other words,
will come after the sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties?
The zeroes? I allowed as how this was an interesting question,
another in the long list of questions I get for which I have
no answer. Aside from speculating and innovating (I've seen
suggestions for "the oughties, the singletons, the ohs, and
the naughties," does anyone know if there was a term for the
first decade of the 1900s? I'm talking historical, attested
forms here.
Dennis
--
This is an interesting question that could have been asked in the first
decade of every century. The phrases "the eighties," "the nineties" and the
like seem to presuppose a specific century (and millenium?). They also seem
to be used deictically, it that one can speak of the "nineties" with
reference to the 1990's but not to the 1890's, unless some time machine
moved us back to the 1800's, I guess... I need native intuitions on this.
Sali.
Salikoko S. Mufwene
Linguistics, U. of Chicago
s-mufwene[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uchicago.edu
312-702-8531