LINGUISTICS: ENGLISH LANGUAGE: USAGE AND GRAMMAR: What is the Plural of Listserv?

[David P. Dillard]

LINGUISTICS: ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
USAGE AND GRAMMAR:
What is the Plural of Listserv?

This is both a continuation of the most interesting discussion on the
SportPsy discussion group of how one makes listserv a plural word and some
considerations of broader applications of that discussion.

I was traveling in the car going somewhere on a short trip and listening
to a public radio program, Fresh Air with Terry Gross. The program was an
interview with the author or a reviewer of this book:

Everything Bad Is Good for You:
How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter
Author: Steven Johnson
Release: 2005-05-05
Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
Format: Hardcover 256 pages
ISBN: 1573223077
List Price: $23.95

The discussion about this book was most interesting. It seems that in
days when I was young, games were very structured and one would sit and
read the rules carefully before playing and if an action was taken counter
to the rules of the game, somebody would quickly point out that this was
wrong and what the correct way of playing was in this specific case.
Games like Scrabble, Monopoly, Candyland, Uncle Wiggley (You must now take
a red card.), Sorry, and many more all worked in this defined fashion.
This is exactly how many of the video, computer and electronic games
played by the youth of today and game addicts of all ages are not
structured. One tends in many games to be placed in an environment and
taught how to survive electronically in that environment by trial and
error, advice of game personalities in the interactive electronic
environment and from books published to guide one in that game, not to
mention discussions between two or more gamers in person, in chat rooms,
on discussion boards and on websites devoted to collecting wisdom about
one or more electronic games. Perhaps chess, despite its fixed rules,
would be an old example of this kind of learning curve for getting to a
sophisticated level of play and the game Go the same.

When I was in graduate school, we had an exercise to look up and find a
source to answer ten questions. On one question, I found the answer to
the question but was marked wrong because I did not, according to the
teacher, use the most logical source.

The internet and active online media in general have greatly changed the
way thinking and understanding are being structured. As in the e-games
adolescents idolize these days, so in real life situations the norms for
what is correct and what is incorrect are more relative and carved in
quicksand.

What does this have to do with pluralizing listserv correctly. Please do
not rush me, I am getting there. I, unlike many folk, find that off topic
posting can be quite interesting, even when it is a footnote to a germaine
post. I have a post on this topic that I invite folks to read.

From: "David P. Dillard" <jw...@astro.ocis.temple.edu>
Date: Fri May 21, 2004 4:03 pm
Subject: SPORTS: BASEBALL : LITERACY:
Baseball Player Shaves For Literacy AND
Patron Saints of Libraries in the Middle Ages
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Net-Gold/message/54?viscount=100>

On the Temple University Listserv server there is an excellent discussion
group named SportPsy:

SportPsy
Archives of SPOR...@LISTSERV.TEMPLE.EDU
Exercise and Sports Psychology
<https://listserv.temple.edu/archives/sportpsy.html>

It started as just a footnote to a post or as is known in letter
correspondence the P.S. or post script. The P.S. was in a post about
quotes that illustrate toughness in sport which has been a key interest of
one of the list participants and a major and interesting topic of
discussion on this group lately. The P.S. was a question regarding the
correct plural of listserv. The poster gave a choice, listservs or
listserves.

I do not think at that time anyone expected this question to create a very
educational and extensive discussion that this question created. I posted
twice to this list on this topic and I will include my comments in this
post. Every post in this thread made a very intelligent and important
contribution to this discussion and the original poster made some great
observations as a part of this thread. My position throughout this
discussion regarding the answers offered regarding the plural of listserv
is that nobody was correct and nobody was wrong, it all depends. In fact,
there is no one way to describe Net-Gold, SportPsy, Newsroom-L or any of
the other groups like them in a variety of internet environments either
in the singular or the plural.

So what is the point of there being a variety of ways of describing lists
or discussion groups or email lists or online email groups. Well as the
original poster, Dr. Jim Taylor, sport psychology expert, pointed out
downstream, it is like communication with athletes. Each athlete is
different so that what you say to each and focus on to motivate each of
them will differ greatly from the approaces used with others. The use of
listserv or its synonyms or various synonymous plural forms is not a word
usage rule problem, but rather a problem in communication. With whom is
this concept being discussed and what do they bring in the way of
understanding to this problem. If one is corresponding with the legal
counsel for the Listserv trademark owning company in charge of
intellectual property enforcement, one would not be tempted to use either
listserv or listservs generically. If one was speaking to a group of
webmasters or web design specialists, ones word choice would be far
different than the language used to teach basic internet skills in a
nursing home where an in house discussion group online was being set up
for the residents and staff to communicate.

In short, much more was learned from this discussion about the internet
making the fixed law of communication somewhat inappropriate to even a
simple matter of pluralizing what may or may not be a word, given its
corporate trade name roots like those of Jello, Xerox and others. Secondly
a great discussion of the relevance of speech to the usefulness and
understanding of the intended audience was also a part of this learning
curve type of discussion that proved to be a most valuable exchange.
Unmentioned, but also very valuable and important to the nature of the
field most of this membership is professional in was the great respect
held by each of these participants for the opinions of all others.
Finally, this discussion is added to my list of very useful learning
experiences about a topic that is not a core subject of the group in which
it took place. Humorously, after this discussion, I found this line in my
list of current emails today with the poster's name changed from the
University Web Design (UWEBD) discussion group.

N 8203 Jun 10 John Smith (3719) [uwebd] RE: Listserves

The entire SportPsy discussion occured across the boundaries of two weeks
and may be viewed at these URLs

<http://snipurl.com/fhw1>

<http://snipurl.com/fhw3>

I am using SnipURLs only here because of an interesting quirk of Listserv
software that will reject message from a list and its archives if a URL
from that list is anywhere in the post document, this creates an error
situation which has given me another reason to love short URL services
greatly. These posts, except for the original question are all found
under the heading "the plural of listserv"

The weeks in question in the archives of SportPsy are:

# June 2005, week 2
# June 2005, week 1

--------------------------------------

My first post in this thread:

Listserv is the company that powers this discussion group on the Temple
server. Its corporate identity is an important one. This issue of using
the "word" listserv as a description for any email based discussion group
is a difficult one and the plural for listserv issue highlights this
problem. Alternatives to listservs are not as clear. "Email lists" has
other meanings besides that of a plural form for listserv, such as a list
of people or email addresses one maintains or corresponds with. This
would be similar to an email directory. Discussion group and its plural
discussion groups can be other than internet and email based. They can be
live meetings, web based bulletin boards and so forth. Regardless of what
a language usage book or online guide may say on this matter, if indeed it
is addressed, a search of Google for the "word" listservs finds this
result:

Web Results 1 - 10 of about 1,180,000 for listservs

Somebody out there is using this term and it may be a very good
description of an aggregation in discussion of a number of groups like
this one. The best solution may be not to use the most correct form, as
the internet is so new that correct may be hard to apply to this language
bulldozer. Instead, it may be more expedient to use the terminology for
this concept that best fits the situation and the audience to whom the
content bearing this concept in whatever verbal form is addressed. If you
choose listservs, you will have plenty of company. Another possible
phrase is "mailing lists", but again the ambiguity occurs.

Email lists is also heavily used:

Web Results 1 - 10 of about 2,570,000 for "email lists".

But mailing lists is even more heavily used:

Web Results 1 - 10 of about 90,500,000 for "mailing lists".

The kind of source that answers the descriptions of either of these
phrases, like this example below found in the email lists search results,
is what concerns me about the use of either phrase:

=============================================

Mailing List Brokers Business Mailing Lists Consumer Medical ...
|Links|. Mailing List Broker - Buy Targeted Business Mailing Lists - Email
Lists -
Dallas Company - Direct Mail Marketing.

=============================================

Both have a direct marketing email spam connotation in addition to the
connotation of discussion group and the use of these phrases could hit
some readers or listeners as being the merchandising connotation of the
word. Just some thoughts about the nature of this terminology and its
implications. It is especially a difficult problem because there are an
awful lot of folks out there who have no clue what groups like SportPsy
and its like in any subject field does or how such groups work.

By the way, for anyone interested in the new Google research tools, Google
Print and Google Scholar, I have pulled together in one post links to a
group of Net-Gold posts about both of these tools with some discussion of
PubMed and of Scirus as well in these linked posts

--------------------------------------

My second post:

Actually I think it was Jim Taylor who got this going and Kay had the
first answer. I have been reading this thread with a great deal of
amusement because it is so pertinent to the whole problem of describing
phenomena accurately and correctly. Everbody on this list knows what
SportPsy is, and we have already had a handful of names to attach to this
here thing and others like it.

I thought that it might be interesting to check the scoreboard with the
latest entries in this nomenclature discussion. Google is again my source
and I am including the "sponsored links" as this terminology is attracting
these paid links and note the Google "Did You Mean" suggestion for the use
of listsserv.

Web Results 1 - 10 of about 82 for LISTSSERV. (0.19 seconds)

Sponsored Links

ListServe.com
Professional Email List hosting
Discussion & Announce Broadcasts
ListServe.com

Listserve from $5/mo
Email list hosting for newsletters,
marketing, ezines. Fast. Reliable.
A-ListHosting.com

Did you mean: LISTSERV

----------------------------------------

Web Results 1 - 10 of about 60,700 for "online discussion group". (0.43
seconds)

Discussion Group
groups.google.com Read or join Usenet newsgroups Try Google Groups
Beta - Free!

----------------------------------------

Web Results 1 - 10 of about 110,000 for "online discussion groups". (0.36
seconds)

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----------------------------------------

Web Results 1 - 10 of about 1,230,000 for "online forums".

To summarize what I have seen on the internet and in the most enjoyable
comments in this thread is that the answer to this question from Jim
Taylor is a plural answer, there is simply no one answer. I further
contend that all of the answers are correct in terms of the solution
chosen by each person is acceptable. I revert to my original post in
which I said what works in a situation is the best way to go. If you are
writting a doctoral dissertation, what you select may be different from
what a SportPsy member speaking to a local garden club might say about the
role of groups like SportPsy, Arete and SportHist in modern society. One
of my fun activities in life is database searching. The work that goes
into selecting and organizing terminology for the search statements is
hard for new clients to sometimes understand. It is Greek to them until
they start seeing in the results the strange results words can pull, even
in combination with other words. I also want to stress that this
discussion is anything but trivial. Understanding the words one uses to
describe phenomena and their reasons for selecting them is critical to
clear and meaningful communication. Knowing wrong word denotations to
ones context enables one to know when possible wrong interpretations of
wordings signals the need to clarify terminology. Given the blank stares
I have seen in discussions of this type of group, and as a list moderator
and owner I do discuss this phenomena a great deal, one may want to
explain as well as state in many contexts when discussion groups like this
one in either the singular or plural becomes the topic of discussion.

----------------------------------------

Thanks to all who participated in this disccussion on SportPsy as I
learned much by reading the comments of others and by then thinking about
them and putting my own thoughts in reaction to these comments in
writing, even though the original question came from another participant.

----------------------------------------

By the way, does anybody know the plural of water?


Sincerely,
David Dillard
Temple University
(215) 204 - 4584
jw...@astro.temple.edu
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/net-gold>
<http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/ringleaders/davidd.html>
<http://www.kovacs.com/medref-l/medref-l.html>
<http://listserv.temple.edu/archives/net-gold.html>
<http://www.LIFEofFlorida.org>
World Business Community Advisor
<http://www.WorldBusinessCommunity.org>

[David P. Dillard]

Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2005 21:18:03 +0200
From: Claude Almansi <claude....@bluewin.ch>
Reply-To: Net-...@yahoogroups.com
To: Net-...@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Net-Gold] LINGUISTICS: ENGLISH LANGUAGE: USAGE AND GRAMMAR:

What is the Plural of Listserv?

David P. Dillard wrote:
>
> LINGUISTICS: ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
> USAGE AND GRAMMAR:
> What is the Plural of Listserv?

Very interesting. So using "listserv" is like using "hoover" for a
"vacuum cleaner", except that there is no real alternative synonym if
you don't want to use "listserv"?
I'm not sure "hoover" is used as a noun, actually, or if it is used at
all nowadays.

The first listserv I joined was James Beniger's "Triumph Of Content"
("TOC" see
<http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0004/msg00220.html>
or <http://tinyurl.com/bzazb>), in 2000. I had only recently stopped
phoning people to check if they had really got the e-mail I had sent.
And there were all these people swopping information, articles,
discussing them, or fighting as to who among them had first used of
"napster" as a word.

A few days ago, James Beniger forwarded an article to TOC:
Deborah Friedell's "The Word Crunchers", New York Times, June, 2005
<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/books/review/05FRIE01.html?pagewanted=print>
or <http://tinyurl.com/9u26l>, describing concordance makers of the past
with the amused condescendance she might have used for the mating
habits of dinasaurs.

Well, making a concordance on cards was thrilling and addictive, actually.

But what I find really great is that even in this digital age, people
have not stopped directly crunching words themselves - even if they
resort to tech for evidence :-)

cheers

Claude

--
Claude Almansi

http://www.adisi.ch
http://www.digitaldivide.net/blog/claude
http://www.digitaldivide.net/community/languages