Date: Sun, 19 Mar 1995 00:18:28 CST

From: "Donald M. Lance" ENGDL[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MIZZOU1.BITNET

Subject: Re: Variable -s on Nouns



Michael Montgomery has supplied exactly the kind of real-life examples

I was hoping for. Each generation must keep in mind that the next ones

will develop their own language rules. "Ozarks Mountains" and "Cowboys

runner" sound as right to their users as they sound wrong to me. Meaning,

of course,"not grammatical in my dialect." "A scissor" and "a pant" also

have wrong shapes for the holes in my lexical paradigm. I've noticed

forms like "Cowboys runner" in the speech of sports announcers on tv but

didn't recall them when I posted the info about -s on attributive

'Ozark/s'. Thanks, Michael. DMLance