Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

When I was in school (which was a very long time ago) they spent a little time teaching us how to map out sentences graphically.   I think the point was to make it clearer to the young mind how nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives and conjunctions all relate to each other.   Sometimes I still take up pen and paper to attempt diagramming a long, long sentence, just for fun, though I haven't completed one in quite a while.   Intellectually speaking it feels a lot like flowcharting a computer program.

For those who still remember how, try diagramming this beautiful example:

"Though unconscionably long, it was a most companionable voyage, particularly as the Surprise was able to do away with much of invidious difference between deliverer and delivered by providing the sickly, undermanned Berenice with a surgeon, her own having been lost, together with his only mate, when their boat overturned not ten yards from the ship—neither could swim, and each seized the other with fatal energy—so that her people, sadly reduced by Sydney pox and Cape Horn scurvy, were left to the care of an illiterate but fearless loblolly boy; and to provide her not merely with an ordinary naval surgeon, equipped with little more than a certificate from the Sick and Hurt Board, but with a full-blown physician in the person of Stephen Maturin, the author of a standard work on the diseases of seamen, a Fellow of the Royal Society with doctorates from Dublin and Paris, a gentleman fluent in Latin and Greek (such a comfort to his patients), a particular friend of Captain Aubrey's and, though this was known to very few, one of the Admiralty's—indeed of the Ministry's—most valued advisers on Spanish and Spanish-American affairs: in short an intelligence agent, though on a wholly independent and voluntary basis."

This has nothing to do with diagramming sentances, the issue is whether the plural of pair is pair (one sheep, two sheep) or pairs (one lamb, two lambs).

I think pair as plural is restricted to some specific situations such as "two pair" in poker.

Larrfirr, there are a number of words that colloquially use the singular for the plural.   It's ungrammatical but common.   Two pair, as you say, but also thirty pound, five mile, fifty foot and a few others.   What's odd is that it's never 12 inch, 100 yard or 16 ounce—it's not just any units of measure, only some of them.   And even for those I hear them more in the American southeast than anywhere else.   I don't know if other parts of the English-speaking world do it too.

Oh, there are also "brace", "yoke" and "head", all when used in the sense of counting.   Two heads are better than one, but you can have thirty head of cattle, three brace of conies and four yoke of oxen.

Not quite the same thing but I suppose you could add "dozen" and "score".