Plurals of Birds

["Bill Stent" <>]

Hmm, I always thought that the plural of ibis was ibis, but then, I'm not a linguist.

 

I'm going to circumvent the whole problem by calling them "rocks" from now on.

 

So next time I'm down at the WTP and I spot a couple of glossy rocks, you'll know what I was on about.

 

Bill from IBIS

---

From: on behalf of Rod Gardner
Sent: Mon 20/02/2006 4:52 PM
To: Tony Russell
Cc: 'Birding Aus'; 'Jill & Reg Oakley'
Subject: RE: [BIRDING-AUS] Plurals of Birds

Well, Tony, you asked for it. I'm a pseudo academic pedant who is a
linguist as well as a birder. Most linguists, to the horror of many,
are pretty laissez-faire about what is acceptable in language.
Basically, if some way of using language is widespread, then it's
acceptable. It's about what people actually say that's the baseline,
not what I or anyone else thinks they should say. So when it comes to
plural forms for birds, it's okay to use the 's' or not, if both are
used widely enough and are generally understood. And I would suggest
that most people would think '15 teal' is perfectly acceptable - in
fact find me someone who talks about teals. Like so much in life
(including avian taxonomy), there are fuzzy edges and lots of
indeterminacy, and we just have to live with it. Maybe not terribly
scientific, but there you go.

Of course, linguists are not the final authority on these matters,
just people who spend a lot of time working with language.

Cheers,

Rod


Quoting Tony Russell <>:

> In my view there's no reason for birders to invent some sort of
> special
> or "s-less" plurals for birds. The English language provides
> adequate
> rules for expressing singular and plural forms of names and nouns,
> with
> just a few weird exceptions like aphid, dice, etc.
> For birds, I put the "s" on. Sounds ridiculous and incorrect to me
> to
> say anything other than "two crows" or "five albatrosses" or ' ten
> ibises" or " four magpies".  However, I expect some pseudo
> academic
> pedant will come up with some "scientific rationale" for saying two
> crow
> or four magpie. As if things aren't complex enough already.
> Ho hum.
> 
>
> Tony
>

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