/The Noun and Adjective/--The only inflections of the noun remaining in English are those for number and for the genitive, and so it is in these two regions that the few variations to be noted in vulgar American occur. The rule that, in forming the plurals of compound nouns or noun-phrases, the /-s/ shall be attached to the principal noun is commonly disregarded, and it goes at the end. Thus, "I have two /sons-in-law/" is never heard; one always hears "I have two /son-in-laws/." So with the genitive. I once overheard this: "that umbrella is /the young lady I go with's/." Often a false singular is formed from a singular ending in /s/, the latter being mistaken for a plural. /Chinee/, /Portugee/ and /Japanee/ are familiar; I have also noted /trapee/, /tactic/ and /summon/ (from /trapeze/, /tactics/ and /summons/). Paradoxically, the word /incidence/ is commonly misused for /incident/, as in "he told an /incidence/." Here /incidence/ (or /incident/) seems to be regarded as a synonym, not for /happening/, but for /story/. I have never heard "he told /of/ an incidence." The /of/ is always omitted. The general disregard of number often shows itself when the noun is used as object. I have already quoted Lardner's "some of the men has brung their /wife/ along"; in a popular magazine I lately encountered "those book ethnologists ... can't see what is before their /nose/." Many similar examples might be brought forward. The adjectives are inflected only for comparison, and the [Pg230] American commonly uses them correctly, with now and then a double comparative or superlative to ease his soul. /More better/ is the commonest of these. It has a good deal of support in logic. A sick man is reported today to be /better/. Tomorrow he is further improved. Is he to be reported /better/ again, or /best/? The standard language gets around the difficulty by using /still better/. The American vulgate boldly employs /more better/. In the case of /worse/, /worser/ is used, as Charters shows. He also reports /baddest/, /more queerer/ and /beautifulest/. /Littler/, which he notes, is still outlawed from standard English, but it has, with /littlest/, a respectable place in American. The late Richard Harding Davis wrote a play called "The /Littlest/ Girl." The American freely compares adjectives that are incapable of the inflection logically. Charters reports /most principal/, and I myself have heard /uniquer/ and even /more uniquer/, as in "I have never saw nothing /more uniquer/." I have also heard /more ultra/, /more worse/, /idealer/, /liver/ (that is, /more alive/), and /wellest/, as in "he was the /wellest/ man you ever seen." In general, the /-er/ and /-est/ terminations are used instead of the /more/ and /most/ prefixes, as in /beautiful/, /beautifuller/, /beautifullest/. The fact that the comparative relates to two and the superlative to more than two is almost always forgotten. I have never heard "the /better/ of the two," but always "the /best/ of the two."