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.
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.