What's the plural of "Naming Context" ?

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Trust No One®

I'm working on some technical documentation and I'm abolutely stumped !

Any grammatical experts on the group :) ?
 
Trust No One® said:
I'm working on some technical documentation and I'm absolutely stumped !

Any grammatical experts on the group :) ?
Click to expand...

"Naming Contexts" -- that's not even a hard one. "Naming" is not
a noun in this phrase, it is either part of the whole phrase or being used
as an adjective to modify context. Therefore only "context" or the whole
phrase is made plural through the normal rule.

"xts" is a LITTLE hard to say, but when I TRY to say, "5 naming Context"
it is virtually impossible not to add the "s". <grin>

(I started to look up "context" to see if it was a inregular plural itself,
but
two things stopped me, "5 context" and usually the rule for multiple word
nouns is to go back to standard rules.

I also believe it is perfectly correct to say the "The Data IS
something...."
IF you mean "The Data" as an aggregate (think "salt" or "sugar"), so what
do I know.
[/QUOTE]
 
I think it is just "Naming Contexts"

I Took a look in the Active Directory Technical Reference Book from
Microsoft Press, and that uses the above.....

It's in print so it must be true... :-)
 
Jody Flett said:
I think it is just "Naming Contexts"

I Took a look in the Active Directory Technical Reference Book from
Microsoft Press, and that uses the above.....

It's in print so it must be true... :-)
Click to expand...
Hmmm..

I had thought about "Naming Contexts" but it just didn't look right somehow
:)

Hi Jody. We meet again. Hotfix 827531 :)
 
Find the time to read 'Words and Rules' by Steven Pinker if you like
this kind of thing :-)

I agreed that for all it may sound wierd, "naming contexts" is
probably right. Pinker's theory, persuasively made, is that there are
no new irregular plurals and that those words which pluralise
irregularly do so for historical reasons. The example he gives is that
the plural of 'leaf' is 'leaves', but Toronto's hockey team is not the
'maple leaves' but the 'maple leafs' - because you are not talking
about actual leaves on a maple tree but creating a new term which you
then pluralise regularly by adding an s

So it would follow that 'naming context' is not two separate words
which should be considered separately, but a new single word which
gets an s to pluralise it.

Sad grammer nerds of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but
your irregular plurals!

(as an aside, what is the plural of 'referendum' - DONT start a thread
for this :-)
 
You didn't do Latin did you?

Well it sounds like it should be referedum pl referenda (please
remember every day, neuter plurals end in a) in the original Latin,
which is what most people go for. As indeed did I till, somebody with
better Latin than mine picked me up on this.

It appears that referendum is a gerund and means 'the referring' and
so has not got a latin plural. So the correct options are either
Latin: referendum pl referendum or English: referendum pl referrendums
- the one thing it cannot be is referenda

The current view is that rather than pluralise imported words in their
original (the one that stumped me was the plural of pro forma in
Latin, there really isn't one) it is better to treat them as English
and put an S on the end :-)
 
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