From Steven Pinker’s _Words and Rules_, page 164 (in a discussion of
how nouns that normally have irregular plurals may sometimes form
their plurals regularly in certain situations):
"Note that _Mickey Mouses,_ a double convert, gets a slightly
different explanation from _the Childs,_ a single convert. With
Mickey, but not with Julia, the surname has a visible connection with
the ordinary noun, so the problem is not the lack of a root; it is the
inaccessibility of a root."
Does anyone here agree with Pinker’s reasoning the idea that the
Mickey Mouse and Julia Child examples get "slightly different
explanation[s]"? He claims that the surname "Child" cannot have the
common noun "child" as a root even though it happens to sound the
same, because the name has no "visible connection" with the basic
word; but he treats "Mickey Mouse" differently because of its obvious
semantic connection with "mouse". Of course, you’ll get "Childs" and
"Mouses" for the plurals regardless of whether you believe that the
names lack roots or merely have roots that are inaccessible, but my
point is that Pinker does make a distinction between the two cases.
The reason I bring this up is that it seems relevant to the process of
calquing, as with the name "Pacific Ocean", which I discussed last
year with Nathan Sanders. By Pinker’s logic, the root of the word
"Ocean" in that name would be the common noun "ocean", but "Pacific"
would be, like "Atlantic", nothing more than a rootless name. It
would only happen to sound like the adjective "pacific" (= peaceful).
So, according to Pinker’s theory, "Pacific" as the name of an ocean
would have *no* literal meaning, thus rendering absurd all the
attempted "calques" found in many of the world’s languages that
interpreted the word as though it meant "peaceful" (e.g., Russian
"Tikhij"). Do you see what I mean? Nathan kept arguing that
"peaceful" *is*, in fact, the literal meaning of the "Pacific" in
"Pacific Ocean" and the various calqued versions are therefore
legitimate.
- Dan
—
Daniel G. McGrath
Binghamton, New York
e-mail: dmcg6174[AT]gmail[DOT]com
