Analogy and the History of the English Plurals

The development of the English plural system from its complex state in late Old English to its regularized state at the end of the Middle English period has normally been considered to be driven by analogical change, but without great rigor. Using Analogical Modeling on nouns extracted from the York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose and from the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English, it was found that rigorous applications of analogical theory to the problem of the history of the English plurals confirm that the current regular s-plural became regularized through analogical processes. Furthermore, it was found that more minor aspects of the development of the English plurals-such as the maintenance of historical umlaut plurals (e.g. tooth, teeth) and zero plurals (e.g. sheep, sheep), and the spread in late Middle English of the zero plural to roots ending in /s/- are also well explained through Analogical Modeling.

Thesis Author: Pack, Wesley D.

Year Completed: 2009

Committee Members: Royal Skousen, Dirk Elzinga

Thesis Chair: Don Chapman