Why do both English and French have plurals in -s?
[Previous] [Next] [Index] [–Miguel Carrasquer Vidal (adapted by markrose)] Despite what one might think, these are independent developments. The English s-plural comes from the PIE o-stem nominative plural ending *-o:s, apparently extended in Germanic to *-o:s-es by addition of the PIE plural suffix *-es (*-o:s itself comes from *-o-es). This *-o:ses became Proto-Germanic *-o:ziz or *-o:siz, depending on the accent, which gave the attested forms– Gothic -o:s, Old English -as, Old Saxon -os, and Old Norse -ar (with the change *z –> r). Already in Old English there was a tendency to extend this plural in -s to words that were not a-stems, a tendency which has since become nearly universal. The n-plural of German is generalized from the PIE n-stems (*-on-es –> -en). It was still present in Old English n-stems, and survives today in a few words like ‘oxen’. The Romance s-plurals (-as, -os, -es) are derived from the accusative (PIE *-a:ns, *-ons, *-ens). Old French still had separate no
