Talk:Double plural

Fishes and peoples

Is there a name for the phenomenon where you have a plural of plurals, as can be said to be the case with 'fishes' or 'peoples'? The plural of fish is fish, but the plural of different kinds of fish is fishes. In this sense the plural is doubled to convey that what is being discussed is many sets of many. The same is the case with the word 'peoples'; people can mean both the plural of person, and, a singular ethnic/national group. This second sense of the word can be pluralised further to mean many ethnic/national groups. This is different from the examples brought up in this article, where another plural suffix is added without any change in meaning; rather, the meaning of the word changes further with the addition of another plural. Is this a regular linguistic feature with a name, or is it just a by-product of certain words having both a plural or a singular meaning. -- Preceding unsigned comment added by AwaweWiki (talk o contribs) 00:37, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

This can happen in the more ordinary situation where you have the plural of a Mass noun, which doesn't take a plural ending in the mass sense of the word, so that the plural must have a slightly different meaning. "Wines" can mean types of wine, "cheeses" can mean types of cheese, etc. AnonMoos (talk) 18:12, 4 December 2020 (UTC)