Herbert Stahlke
Herbert Stahlke
PhD in Linguistics, UCLA
Also spokesman, sportsman, helmsman, etc. One of the common explanations is that the -s- is genitive.
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https://vocabulary1.quora.com/Why-is-there-an-s-in-the-middle-of-draftsman-What-is-the-semantic-origin-of-it-1?
That sort of works with sportsman and helmsman, less well with draftsman, and not well at all with spokesman. I think rather it's a suffix creating generic and abstract nouns. We have it also in news, sports, etc.
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Generic and plural are closely related semantically, so it's not a surprising shift. I've argued elsewhere that the -s sound on independence and other such -nce words is the same abstract nominalizer, a suffix added to adjectives ending in -nt.
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The standard spelling -nce disguises this analysis, which morphologically would be -nt+s. It may have originate as a plural or a genitive, but by the early 17th century it became an abstract noun suffix.
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You can see variation suggesting this in Shakespeare and other contemporary writers.
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