Luke Myers wrote:
There has been much discussion lately regarding variations in the
forms of word as the context (gender and number) change. It has been
pointed out that not all words follow all of the rules. For example,
coys is not the plural of coy. I do not fail to see the amount of work
that would be needed to do what I am about to propose. This is a
serious undertaking, but should not be refused because of the required
work. I suggest that the dictionary files are modified so that they
contain flags for allowed parts of speech. Each part of speech would
have a rule set defined for each language. Coy would be marked with a
set of flags that would be read as "only to be used as an adjective."
It would take on modifications for adjectives but not the plural endings
and other changes used for nouns (coy-s).
I'm not a linguistic expert, but based on the little i've read on the
subject, one of the most distinctive characteristics of English is the
ability and freedom to switch parts of speech, i.e. make verbs out of
nouns, nouns out of verbs, and most definitely nouns out of adjectives,
and many more possibilities.
There are however words that cannot be switched in this way and although
native speakers intuitively handle these complicated "rules" (habits)
well, input from a linguist would be needed to be able to formulate
these as rules for a grammar checker that really works; i.e. doesn't
fetter and damage the language and enables new and improvised
constructions. E.g.:
"There was quite a variety in character among the participants of the
Lonely Singles Convention, ranging from lazy and coy on the one hand to
active and honest and/or outspoken on the other. Unfortunately, the lazy
and coy participants were often grouped together; this made it even
harder for the lazies to get a grip on themselves and for the coys to
learn to show their interest honestly or convincingly. On the contrary,
the (often too) active participants learned a lot from both the (often
too) honest and the (often too) outspoken ones, but only very few
romantic relationships arose between the outspoken and the active ones."
(not: outspokens; rarely: actives)
In addition, English has plurals without an s marker:
"The rich and the poor seem to have different interests. The rich think
that all they need is less taxes, whereas the poor just want less
injustice."
Not to mention that there are hundreds of Google hits with "two coys",
"three coys", etc. since coy is apparently a commonly used short form of
"company" in military circles.
There's also a verb "coy", which is obviously conjugated "she coys":
www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=coys&x=0&y=0
It's not really important that it's currently considered archaic or
obsolete; it can be reactivated or reinvented at any time.
An open source grammar checker has a very big obligation to not follow
the deleterious example set by Microsoft's spell and grammar checkers,
which have fettered and distorted modern English usage due to *their*
lack of understanding of basic freedoms and creativity inherent in the
language. Not to mention the sheer idiocy and insanity of, for example,
effectively eliminating (within a few years!) the words "their" and
"well-being" from the English language by constantly labeling them as
incorrect even when correctly used.
Ekhart
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