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NEW BOOK
Pluralses: On the Use and Abuse of Multiple Plurals
Edited by Trey Jones and G. Edward Johnson
Published 2005, Hardcover, 67 pages. Price: $237.50
Published in collaboration with Sum Random Publishing House, Gaithersburg, MD.
This slim but exciting volume explores the multiple interpretations of supposedly “morphologically redundant” plurals.
Topics include:
Diachronic Surveys, exploring the history of such alternations as fish/fish/fishes, person/persons/people/peoples, mouse/mice/mouses/mices, and thank/thanks/thanx/thanxes.
Synchronic Explorations, surveying the current useses and meaningses of double pluralses in several diverse dialectses of English.
Spirited Discussion, including the proceedings of the Multiple Plurals Roundtable Discussion Group Conference, MPRDG-Con XIX: Pocketses: Gollum, the Lord of the Rings, and the Sociolinguistic Status of MP on the Upswing
Heated Debate, including sharp point/counterpoint exchanges
in which the editors debate the merits of their preferred
interpretations of the triply plural form childrens (child + [e]r(pl.) + en(pl.) + s(pl.)):
Children, like cats, are more emphatically plural than
most ordinary nouns. Two children are much more than twice as much work
to care for as one, and four much more than twice two. I expect to see
in the future forms like childrenses with four or more plural markers, as speakers continue to subconsciously grammaticalize this exponential plurality of young humans.
from “Point: Childrens and Exponential Plurality--Repeatedly Redundant
Morphological Markers as Semantic Stress”
by noted mathematician Trey Jones
Plural marking is binary, not additive or absolute--that is, speakers use plural markers to toggle plurality. Thus, native speakers instinctively compute that doubly plural children is, logically, no more plural than unpluralized child and so move to correct the situation.
from “Counterpoint: Carefully Correcting
Plurality Parity Imbalances in Children--Telling Triple Toggling Tendencies”
by noted computer scientist G. Edward Johnson
Selected Reviews
“One of the bestest bookses I’ve never read, the intellectuosity goes straight to your head!”
--Dr. Seuss
“A finely-bound, handsome tome, lovingly and painstakingly written in full reverence of the hallowed, historic tradition of scholarly treatises, which craftily and cunningly explores and explicates complex relationships among fascinatingly convoluted interwoven strands of intellectual achievement in the far-reaching field of.. wait.. sorry, I’ve lost it. Can we do another take?”
--Jaques Derrida
“Not overly long or dense, an excellent choice as a topic for a term paper due in less than twenty-four hours.   ”
--National Association of Grad Students, Starred Reviews
An exciting work of scholarly excellence, Pluralses: On the Use and Abuse of Multiple Plurals, edited by Trey Jones and G. Edward Johnson, published jointly by Psammeticus Press and Sum Random Publishing House, is on sale now at fine booksellers world-wide, except where taxed or prohibited by law.
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