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From: steven@boring.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Use of "Vaxen" as plural
Message-ID: <6454@boring.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 12-Jun-85 16:46:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: boring.6454
Posted: Wed Jun 12 16:46:56 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 14-Jun-85 01:17:06 EDT
References: <27400001@gypsy.UUCP> <546@hou2b.UUCP> <561@umd5.UUCP> <666@bbnccv.UUCP>
Reply-To: steven@mcvax.UUCP (Steven Pemberton)
Organization: CWI, Amsterdam
Lines: 19
Apparently-To: rnews@mcvax.LOCAL

In article <666@bbnccv.UUCP> keesan@bbnccv.UUCP (Morris M. Keesan) writes:
> VAXen is probably more akin to "oxen" then "vixen", as far as derivation.
> The "en" suffix is a German pluralization, which has leaked over into
> English in words such as "oxen".

Actually, rather than leaking into English from German, -en plurals is a
feature of Old English, which has only survived in 3 words: children,
brethren and oxen. It is a common feature of Germanic languages, and still
survives in, for example, German and Dutch.

(Actually, chicken is also an example. Chicken was originally the plural of
chick, but for some reason it became used as a singular, perhaps in analogy
to other animal words which have the same singular and plural - e.g. fish,
sheep, deer. Anybody know of any other examples in English of this
happening? In Dutch "teen" (toe) and "schoen" (shoe) were both originally
plurals which are now used as singulars. This means that when in Dutch you
use the plural "tenen" you're really saying "toeses" :-).

Steven Pemberton, CWI, Amsterdam; steven@mcvax