Super Moderator
Location: essex ma
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the people is no more collective in the 2nd than it is in the 1st, 4th, 5th, or 9th.
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um...this makes no sense. even at a grammatical level, it makes no sense. "the people" is plural. it is collective. it is necessarily collective. i suppose you can twist it around to function as a singular==but that's private language stuff, the sort of thing that you read about in transcripts of conversations amongst schizophrenics.
from the oed, the etymology of the term "the people"
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[< Anglo-Norman pople, people, peple, peuple, poeple, pouple, puple, pueple, peopel, popel nation, subjects, common people, crowd and Old French, Middle French pueple, pople, etc. (also pule, peule) inhabitants of a country (first half of the 12th cent. in Old French; earlier as poblo (842), poble (c1000)), subjects (first half of the 12th cent.), mankind (c1135), common people (13th cent.) < classical Latin populus a human community, nation, animals, the populace, the body of citizens exercising legislative power, (plural) nations, peoples, in post-classical Latin also Christians in general, laity, congregation (late 2nd or early 3rd cent. in Tertullian), army (5th cent.), parish (10th cent.), a reduplicated form of uncertain origin. Compare Old Occitan poble (a1149), pobol (c1150; Occitan p̣ble), Catalan poble (c1200), Spanish pueblo (1207), Portuguese povo (13th cent. as poboo, poblo, pobro), Italian popolo (13th cent.; also in 13th cent. as povolo).
In sense 6b after classical Latin popul{imac}, gent{emac}s peoples (see GENS n.).
Although in origin a singular noun, the word had from its earliest use an implied or actual plural sense. In the earliest texts it is found with singular concord. Plural concord occurs from the 15th cent., though singular modifiers continue to be used in some contexts, especially much (see MUCH adj. 2e). Actual plural usage is practically limited to sense 7, and even here many early modern English writers avoided using the plural form (see sense 6b).]
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i suppose that if you can erase the 21st century and replace it with the 18th, you can also erase the linguistic conventions of the 18th and replace them with speculative conventions from the pre 15th century. why not, since at this level there is no distinction between "the original sense" and "playing fast and loose"---both converge of "i see what i want to see."
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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