Are there meta-plurals beyond "peoples"?
The plural of "person" is "people". The plural of "people" is "peoples". Person-people-peoples is the only sequence like this that I know of, but I'm looking for another.
(The equivalent question is, is there another plural noun which has become a singular countable collective noun?)
EDIT
For those of you that think that people is nothing but a collective noun (and not an irregular plural, like mice), I urge you to consider:
- Do you treat other collective nouns as plurals? One person, two people, but one star, two galaxy?
- Do you treat other plurals as collective nouns? You can certainly say "a galaxy of stars" but do you say "a mice of mouses"?
For those of you that think the customary plural of person is persons, try it on the next three, uh, persons you see: "Finish this sentence: 'one person, two _ ?' "
Solution 1:
Fish, fish, fishes: one salmon, one fish, two, two fish; salmon is one fish, haddock another, so two fishes. Works with any noun where the singular and plural are irregularly identical, and the regular plural is used for categories or groups; in a more painfully literal fashion, this also applies to words where the plural has become singular in the common case: one agendum, two agenda; one agenda, two agendas.
Solution 2:
The common plural of person is people. Persons may be common in legalese, but it is very uncommon in day-to-day speech. One normally counts, "one person, two people, three people," etc. When using the word people in this way, the word is not a collective noun, it is a simple plural.
But people is both a plural and a collective -- you can say "two people", but you can also say "a people". That is normally an identifiable national or ethnic group -- and most assuredly not a simple assemblage of more than one person. It's not a collective noun in quite the same sense that flock, herd or murder is; it usually carries ethnic, racial, linguistic, religious or political overtones to the fore. Used in this way, one can talk of "two peoples", "three peoples" and so forth.
As far as I know, the word people is unique in that regard.
Solution 3:
Not sure if this entirely meets your criterion, but there is "medium->media->multi-media"....