Talk:young ladies

An example of the English suppletive terms of address: [1]. The use of young ladies may not be evident, but the paradigm sir / gentlemen is clear. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 02:38, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

RFV discussion: March–April 2017

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young ladies

Plural of "miss". Equinox ◑ 02:42, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

For example, if "Excuse me, Miss" is addressed to one young lady, then what would be the plural? "Excuse me, Misses" does not seem right, so potentially "Excuse me, young ladies" might be used, I guess. Even if this is the rationale, saying that "young ladies" is the "plural" of "miss" seems a stretch. It would need more explanation in a usage note, perhaps. Personally, I think it is not worth it for such a self-evident use, and I would just delete it, unless there is some other rationale that I'm not seeing. Mihia (talk) 03:45, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

It is a linguistically interesting case of suppletion. Compare other terms of address in English and in French [2]:

English		French
Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
Your Majesty	Your Majesties	Votre Majesté	Vos Majestés
sir	gentlemen	monsieur	messieurs
madam	ladies	madame	mesdames
miss	young ladies	mademoiselle	mesdemoiselles

The French terms are regular (if you know French grammar), so is Your Majesty. Others are suppletions. Radka Petrlíková, in her Grammatical Number in English and Czech Nouns, cites L. Dušková:

• In contrast, Dušková (1994) does not distinguish between week and strong suppletion, and does not mention the group of nouns with vowel change in connection with suppletion at all. She names these examples of suppletion: Sir – Gentlemen, Madam – Ladies, Mr. – Messrs, Mrs. – Mesdames. These words may, however, form regular plurals as well, depending on context (p. 43).
  Dušková, L. (1994). Mluvnice současné angličtiny na pozadí češtiny (2nd ed.). Praha: Academia.

— TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 04:11, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

I don't think this is true suppletion- the singular of "young ladies" is "young lady". It looks to me like we just don't have plurals for these polite terms of address, so the plurals of synonyms are used instead (in one case, borrowed from French). This reminds me of can, which has no future tense, and for which English speakers substitute "be able to". We should use that entry as a model and give the information in a usage note. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:07, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Since miss and young ladies are rather dated, it may not be clear. Think about sir and gentlemen instead:

Singular	Plural
Good morning, sir.	*Good morning, sirs.
*Good morning, gentleman.	Good morning, gentlemen.

As terms of address, sir and gentlemen form a singular-plural pair because they are in complementary distribution. Good morning, young lady is possible but it is a term of endearment and different from Good morning, young ladies. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 07:36, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Complementary distribution isn't enough: individual and group are in complementary distribution, but that doesn't make group the plural of individual. I just think that English doesn't handle addressing multiple people very well. I can be addressed as "Mr. Entz", but if my brothers and other male relatives are together in the same room, I'm not sure how we would be addressed: "Mr. Entzes"? Chuck Entz (talk) 14:00, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Messrs. Entz. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:03, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

How does a native speaker pronounce that? DCDuring TALK 14:23, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

I pronounce it to rhyme with dressers. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:35, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Do you think (normal) people understand what you mean? DCDuring TALK 15:26, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

I don't really know very many normal people. That's why I'm a Wikimedian... —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 17:07, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

I (BrE) would have no problem understanding "Messrs", though I think it is becoming a little dated now. Mihia (talk) 23:13, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

I would image that some people might alternatively pronounce it like the full French word, but Merriam-Webster, Cambridge (UK and US pronunciations), the American heritage Dictionary and Dictionary.com agree that in English it is pronounced like messers, rhyming with dressers. - -sche (discuss) 18:05, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Individual and group are not in complementary distribution at all.

Singular	Plural
He is a qualified individual.‎	They are qualified individuals.
It is a qualified group.	They are qualified groups.

There is nothing wrong with individuals or a group, while you don’t say Good morning, sirs. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 04:09, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

I was in a hurry, so I didn't choose my example well. My point is that distribution is only an imperfect proxy for the real criterion: to be a plural of something, a form has to be perceived as the same term. Synonyms tend to share the same distribution, but they aren't the same term. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:59, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

I agree "young ladies" is the plural of "young lady" and not "miss"; "misses" is attested as the plural of "miss", see e.g. google books:"you little misses", google books:"misses Sarah and". A few examples at google books:"good morning misses" are also addressed to multiple women, though many are using the variant spelling of "Mrs"/"missus". The fact that someone might sometimes refer to one person as "miss" and several as "young ladies" might merit mention in a usage note but not in the sense line, IMO; it seems to be more like the phenomenon Chuck notes, of someone referring to one person as an individual and several as a group, than like "person"-"people". Tangentially, perhaps we should convert the list of coordinate terms into a table that would neatly show singulars and plurals, like Mr - Messrs. Btw, I see about twenty hits for "you, sirs, are" and another twenty for google books:"good morning, sirs" (some may be scannos?), which is about as many as for "good morning, messrs". - -sche (discuss) 17:55, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Miss as a title and miss as a term of address are different, just like Mr. and sir are different.

Title		Term of address
Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
Mr.	Messrs.	sir	gentlemen
Mrs.	Mmes.	madam	ladies
Miss	Misses	miss	young ladies

— TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 16:43, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

But that doesn't mean that young ladies is the actual plural of miss, only that it stands in for it. --WikiTiki89 20:07, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Is there any other example? In fact it is not uncommon for suppletion to have an alternate paradigm. The singular-plural pair person-people is well established and often cited as an example of suppletion, but people has an own plural in the sense of ethnic group. I’m personally interested in suppletion, and some recently proposed suppletions may shock you, such as a lot of-more-most proposed by Jonathan David Bobaljik in his Universals in Comparative Morphology: Suppletion, superlatives, and the structure of words in 2011. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 06:26, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

RFV-failed; no citations were provided and there's no consensus, and considerable objection, to the idea that the usage described (of "young ladies" as an address), even if documented, could be analysed as a plural of "miss". - -sche (discuss) 19:34, 30 April 2017 (UTC)