So my caregiver León Hernández Alvarez said to me last Tuesday; ## represents a word I totally failed to recognize, at the most elemental level; I didn’t recognize any of the sounds in the word, though I thought it was probably of the form CV. L then came closer to me and said it again, more slowly: “I have a n#”. Ah, an initial n — a Spanish n (distinct from an English n), but clearly something in the [n] zone, and followed by a vowel. On the third repetition, I was able to identify the vowel: u — a Spanish u (distinct from an English u), but clearly something in the [u] zone. Apparently, L was telling me that he had a [nu].
I recognized the word phonetically, but still totally failed to recognize the lexical item he was talking about. Surely he didn’t have a GNU. Is there such a thing as a NOO? Ah, finally it dawned on me: L was telling me he had a NEW. Hmm, a new what? And then, finally, the realization that he was telling me that he had a piece of news, that he had reconstructed a singular NEW ‘report of a recent event’ from the word NEWS ‘report of recent events’. This is clever, but alas mistaken.
It’s certainly understandable. NEWS sounds like a plural (and in spelling, looks like a plural) and has plural semantics, referring to a multiplicity of events. (Which is what L said to me, in somewhat simpler wording, when I told him that, unfortunately, NEWS is singular.) In addition, a plural NEWS would be entirely compatible with many of the contexts the word occurs in:
I have some good news. The news came early in the morning. Have you heard the news? I expect the news to be good.
From the phonology (and/or orthography), the semantics, and data like these, you would of course conclude that NEWS is grammatically plural, and therefore should have a singular form NEW. Why not?
Because there are crucial data saying that NEWS is in fact grammatically singular:
The news ✓comes / *come early in the morning. ✓Much / *Many of the news will be shocking. A lot of the news ✓is / *are good. *three news
cf. The reports *comes / ✓come early in the morning. *Much / ✓Many of the reports will be shocking, A lot of the reports *is / ✓are good. ✓three reports
That is, wherever the grammatical context requires a singular form, NEWS is possible; and wherever it requires a plural form, NEWS is barred. Therefore, NEWS is grammatically singular.
I didn’t go through all this with L. Just said that NEWS was, regrettably, singular, so if you want a way to talk about only one thing in the news, you have to say something like a piece of news (or a news item, though I didn’t mention that strategy; nor did I use the term partitive — what L needed was something immediately helpful, not the whole truth in detail — for the moment, it would do for him to commit piece of news to memory).
A hard truth, but one that L immediately recognized; he’s a smart guy, and also earnest about improving his English, for which he is taking a night class. Since he’s smart, he wanted to know how this happened. Ultimately, of course, the answer is that it’s just the way things are, tough shit, buddy. But a more complete answer involves an appeal to the difference between C(ount) nouns and M(ass) nouns in English, a topic that L’s English class hadn’t gotten to yet, so I had to do an impromptu non-technical lecture on the subject. As it happens, I’m an actual authority about this stuff, with work on it going back decades. But now I suddenly had to produce an elevator talk on it. (A lot of teaching is telling useful half-truths. It’s a tricky craft. An elevator talk is dramatically compressed teaching, to someone who isn’t actually in a class of yours and doesn’t care who you are. So you have to cut a hell of a lot of corners)
So now I’ll give you a spiffed up version of what I said to L. Spiffed up because what I actually said, in the heat of the moment, unprepared for the task, wasn’t as compact and coherent as what I’m about to write.
C and M in brief. Nouns come in two types, called Count and Mass. C nouns like CHAIR mostly refer to things, like chairs. M nouns like SAND mostly refer to stuff, like sand. M nouns are grammatically singular, period, even if you could count the parts of stuff, like the grains of sand. C nouns have plural forms, referring to multiple things — chairs, shrubs — as well as singular forms, referring to a single thing — chair, shrub. M nouns don’t have plurals, take singular agreement on verbs, and occur with special determiners, like much (versus many for plural C nouns).
But some nouns that refer to collections of things are, against expectation, M nouns: furniture, shrubbery. So: many chairs are ornate, but much furniture[no suffix] is ornate; many shrubs have withered, but much shrubbery[no suffix] has withered. This is just something you have to learn.
And some nouns that look and sound like plurals are, despite that, just funny M nouns: linguistics, news. So: much modern linguistics is fun, much current news is disturbing.
[That’s it. The elevator ride is over. Don’t ding at me about all the provisos and complications and details that a full account would provide; my time is up.]
A tangled history. L is surely not the first learner of English as a second language to go off the rails in exactly this way; it’s a kind of trap in the language, just lying there, waiting to ensnare learners. All you have to do is not notice the counterexamples, or not appreciate their implications, or assume that they’re inadvertent errors (and silently “correct” them mentally), or suppose that they’re from an odd dialect you hadn’t come across before.
It’s entirely possible that a number of learners might independently make this same misanalysis, which would then spread through their community, so that plural NEWS becomes a feature of their variety; this could happen in Chicano English.
But now the surprise: plural C NEWS is the older variant, but singular M NEWS is attested not very long after the plural variant appeared in written records. What OED3 (2003) tells us:
OED3 on the noun news:
— 1 † New things; novelties. Obsolete. [14th – 17th century cites]
— 2 The report or account of recent (esp. important or interesting) events or occurrences, brought or coming to one as new information; new occurrences as a subject of report or talk; tidings.
— 2a.With plural agreement. Now archaic and Indian English. [1st cite 1417]
— 2b With singular agreement. Now esp. such information as published or broadcast. [1st cite 1532]
— 2c As predicate: a person, thing, or place regarded as worthy of discussion or of reporting by the media. [1st cite 1917, from Kipling: Huckley was News.]
— 3 As a [singular] count noun: a piece or item of news. Now chiefly Caribbean and Indian English. [cites of a news from 1574 on; but with plural newses, so not relevant here]
The long withering away of plural C NEWS and apparently rapid spread of singular M NEWS (with only about a century between their first appearances) needs further investigation, with a careful examination of the sources in context, not just the sampling of cites here. I’m hoping that there have been textual studies, and also some explanations for the semantic development, but I have no access to such materials.
Then from NOAD on the noun news, including some recent sense developments (among them, in d, OED3’s sense 2c):
[a] newly received or noteworthy information, especially about recent or important events: I’ve got some good news for you.
[b] (the news) a broadcast or published report of news: he was back in the news again.
[c] (news to) informal information not previously known to someone: this was hardly news to her.
[d] a person or thing considered interesting enough to be reported in the news: Chanel became the hottest news in fashion
And finally OED3 on the noun new (an entry I had high hopes for):
— 1a As a mass noun: that which is new; the new version, variety, etc., of something. [from Old English on to modern examples of the love of the new, the knights of new, the shock of the new]
— 1b † As a count noun: a new person or thing; esp. a new lover or friend. [from Old English through 19th century; some examples might be elliptical]
But sense 1b is not the singular C noun new ‘a piece of news’ that L used with me, which the OED seems not to have collected separately from the plural report noun in OED3’s news sense 2a. Or maybe I’ve just failed to make sense of the OED‘s rat’s nest of new-related material.
Here I rest; I can go no further.
October 20, 2024 at 3:31 pm |
On my last sentence above:
I had a Lutheran-influenced childhood; that sentence is a little joke on my (misremembered) resigned version Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht mehr of Martin Luther’s fiercely defiant Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders.
October 20, 2024 at 3:44 pm |
I sometimes see comments suggesting that English has more traps of this kind for those learning it as a second language than other languages do. Is there any basis for that?
October 20, 2024 at 4:03 pm |
Not that I can see. I suspect that these comments come from teachers of English as a second language and other people working closely with the language; they appreciate these details because the details loom so large in their experience. From my experiences as a (poor) practical learner of various languages, I would say that there are traps a-plenty everywhere.
And then there’s the quantification problem: how to define Trap Incident Rate? (per what?).
October 20, 2024 at 5:00 pm
Perhaps English only has the usual rate of traps of the news type, but the oversized vocabulary adds more chances for homophones, creating traps of the gnus / knew / noose variety, and the lose / loose / loser / closer (“nearer”) / closer (“one that closes”) variety. A friend was just mentioning how so many English spellings have multiple pronunciations, while the sounds can also have different spellings, and how he was glad he learned English natively.
October 21, 2024 at 7:02 am
To SK re “Perhaps English only has …”:
You’re using a specific (and English-focused) definition of homophone here, having to do with the mapping between spelling and pronunciation. (By more conventional definitions, having to do with the mapping between pronunciations and meanings, river bank and financial bank are exemplary homophones, as are drinking straw and fodder straw.)
On the other hand, spelling / pronunciation homophones can (with some care) be counted, and English would surely have a high incidence, and high rate, of homophony in this sense — but primarily because of the eccentricities of English spelling (preserving spellings from long ago, and taking loanwords in with their spelling in the language of origin).
October 21, 2024 at 5:55 am |
In German, the concept “stuff” can be represented by the adjective alone, functioning as a noun, with singular neuter inflection (which means a suffix -es). Thus, “new stuff” is expressed as Neues from adjectival neu. I wonder if “news” is a remnant of a similar procedure in earlier forms of English (which is a Germanic language, with a lot of other stuff accreted).
(This is merely an observation, and should not be interpreted as a request for further research or explanation.)