Doing Grammar Good
When a noun is followed by a descriptive phrase, the plural of this unit is formed by simply rendering the noun plural, not the subsequent phrase. Some examples make this quite obvious: Rainforest of Guinea-Bissau clearly becomes Rainforests of Guneau-Bissau, rather than Rainforest of Guinea-Bissaus. Nobody wants Dostoevsky to rename his book The Brother Karamazovs. Nonetheless, this is not always an obvious point; most print material does correctly utilize the lovely little compound passersby, but a number of people at my workplace have ordered such things as "Two sausage on a sticks." I fear that even the most committed of descriptive grammarians would be forced to censure such usage.
posted by Robert C. Hamilton at 1:29 AM
1 Comments:
if they ordered 'sausages on sticks,' it loses some precision, so that maybe you're just going to go out back and strip the bark from a fir twig and try to make them like the japanese mummies of honshu. ever think about THAT, mr. smarty-pants?
but yeah, all kidding aside, it's a problem which must be redressed. just call them stick stuck sausages and have done.
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