Timeline for Plural of belief: beliefs or believes?
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14 events
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| Dec 17, 2016 at 22:21 | comment | added | J.R.♦ | The mod team has converted this to a community wiki because, even though it contains questionable information, we believe this answer along with some of the ensuing comments may be instructive for the learner. | |
| Dec 17, 2016 at 22:19 | history | made wiki | Post Made Community Wiki by J.R.♦ | ||
| Dec 17, 2016 at 22:19 | history | rollback | J.R.♦ |
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| Dec 17, 2016 at 22:18 | history | undeleted | J.R.♦ | ||
| Jan 17, 2016 at 5:41 | history | edited | user24743 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jan 17, 2016 at 5:41 | history | deleted | user24743 | via Vote | |
| Jan 10, 2016 at 16:01 | review | Low quality posts | |||
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| Nov 27, 2015 at 22:24 | comment | added | Jasper | This is not a generalizable pattern. Consider "dwarf", "scarf", "sheaf", and "leaf". | |
| Nov 27, 2015 at 9:45 | comment | added | DRF | @rathony Actually handkerchief admits plural hand·ker·chiefs and hand·ker·chieves (Merriam-Webster) Roof has an archaic plural rooves and half can apparently be pluralized both halves and halfs though the reference for that is CGEL so I will have to wait till I get home to check if that's correct. | |
| Nov 27, 2015 at 8:53 | comment | added | sumelic | Hmm. I may have misread your first two sentences. I read it as saying that there is some general principle in English against having the plural form of nouns and the third-person singular forms of verbs be identical. But in fact, you were probably saying that in this particular case, it would case confusion because "believes" is not a valid plural form of the noun, but it does happen to be a valid word in a different grammatical context. | |
| Nov 27, 2015 at 8:46 | comment | added | sumelic | I don't think there's really a reason behind it like you say. The plural of "leaf" is "leaves," even though that collides with the third person singular of the verb "to leave." Similarly, the plural of "half" is"halves" even though that is also used as a form of the verb "to halve." There are plenty of other verbs that are identical to nouns, such as love, hate, ride, walk, run; but there isn't much confusion associated with these normally. | |
| Nov 27, 2015 at 8:21 | history | edited | user24743 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Nov 27, 2015 at 7:04 | history | edited | user24743 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Nov 27, 2015 at 7:01 | history | answered | user24743 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |