3 ms·
> Oxen is the sole surviving old weak plural ending in -en I had heard that -en was a surviving "dual" suffix, I think in some presentation from Larry Wall (r
by riffraff 4y ago
> Oxen is the sole surviving old weak plural ending in -en
I had heard that -en was a surviving "dual" suffix, I think in some presentation from Larry Wall (regexen anyone?)
Given oxen were often used in pairs, the dual form survived.
Alas I'm no linguist so I can't confirm this.
- seszett 4y agoI don't know, Dutch is quite close to English (especially regarding these "weird" English plurals, like child/children and kind/kinderen, cow/kine and koe/koien, ox/oxen and os/ossen) and it also has these two plural endings, -s and -(e)n, but they depend mostly on the word ending (with many exceptions) not on meaning. Regarding another note from the article, Dutch also has the "double" plural for child/children with kind/kinderen. As the cases became less and less used, "-er" stopped being seen as plural so people naturally added -en to it to make it plural. A bit like if people started saying "ox/oxens" in English because "oxen" doesn't feel plural enough.
- denton-scratch 4y agoBrethren. Brothers don't always come in pairs. I think Wall is mistaken.