S.Isaac Dealey wrote: >>Say I'm a Spaniard or Hispanophone. Plurals in Spanish always end in >>-es. Is using plurals for tables names more consistant in Spanish than >>English? Of course not. > > Assuming that statement is true, yes it does. I was talking about > syntactical consistency, in which, if I have a rule that all names are > appended with x, then that is a consistent syntactical rule. If I then > amend my rule to say that "all names are appended with x -- except for > names we don't feel like appending with x" (which is how the rules for > plurals in English work) then the syntax rule is inconsistent.
That appears overly rigid to me. The only reason why there's "inconsistency" in English plurals is phonological. -s and -es are both the same morpheme. If you were to ask a linguist if there was inconsistency here, they'd definitely say "no". > There is no way of automating the rule -- it requires manual entry of a > "dictionary" to explain what names are random exceptions to the rule > -- and that's really the whole point -- plurals in english are > arbitrarily random. A consistently applied syntax rule may be > abritrary but is not random. It's rather simple, and doesn't require a special rule, at least not for native germanic words (and a good deal of the romance ones and others in the language, spare the odd irregular ones like "oxen", "children", and the strong nouns). If a world ends in a sibilant (s, z, sh, x [really "ks"], ch [really "tsh"]); the soft "g" is also a sibilant, but owing to other complications doesn't really figure in this), -es is used. If it ends in -y, -ies is used. Otherwise -s. It's quite simple. >>Or let's take Gaelic: nouns in Gaelic come in various declensions, and >>the plural of a word varies depending on its declension (and various >>complex phonological considerations: oh wait! that's why English has >>two plural endings!). > > What english do you speak? I can think of several... s, es, i, a -- Let's take them: -s and -es are really the same morpheme, -i and -a are latinate ones that are barely used in modern English. Not only that, but many of those plurals have morphed into collective nouns (data being one such). > and that's not even including the cases in which the plural of a word > has almost nothing to do with the word in question (person/people, You'll notice that "person" and "people" are not related. You'll also notice that "people" is a collective noun, not a plural. The plural of person is, wait for it, "persons". > goose/geese, mouse/mice). Irregular nouns. Give us a break! >>It could be -anna, -�, -e, -a, the noun could undergo >>palatalisation of the final consonant, &c. Does this make using >>pluralisation more consistant in English than Gaelic? Nope. > > Yep. This goidelophone wishes to disagree. >>But when it comes down to it, this is all convention. I pluralise >>because bits of SQL like "SELECT ... FROM products ...", "INSERT INTO >>products ...", "UPDATE products ...", and "DELETE FROM products ..." >>read better than me because these work on sets of entities as opposed >>to singular entities. When it comes down to it, how it "sounds" is >>really the only way of justifying it. > > It's not the only reason, but it's the reason most commonly > understood. (Re: previous post regarding automation of table names). And we write code for humans to understand, not computers. > Really if you want to run the length of the argument then you could > just as easily name your classes plural as well, and technically a > class does describe a collection of objects (their type), though when > we write code we don't generally think of a class that way, we think > of it as being singular even though we then instantiate objects to > create what are actually singular entities of type. A class is not a collection of objects. A class is is a description of a type of object. Table != class. That's a red herring. OTOH, I pluralise the names of real collections of object, such as arrays, where it makes sense. K. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Logware (www.logware.us): a new and convenient web-based time tracking application. Start tracking and documenting hours spent on a project or with a client with Logware today. Try it for free with a 15 day trial account. http://www.houseoffusion.com/banners/view.cfm?bannerid=67 Message: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=i:4:200917 Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/threads.cfm/4 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=s:4 Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4 Donations & Support: http://www.houseoffusion.com/tiny.cfm/54
