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A friend studies "(technical term) fishes" that is, he studies a group of similar fish species that all share this specific trait. Similarly you might study the native peoples of X, i.e. the plural of the set of tribes/groups.

Can you do this with any plural noun? Has anyone ever studied sheeps/sheepes—the group of different breeds of sheep ?

mgb
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    I have never read/heard "sheeps" (from a literate source, that is). I'd be wary of trying to use that construction, unless you find significant precedent. – Hot Licks Oct 12 '15 at 19:01
  • FWIW, I think you can, but I can't back that up with a citation. – Drew Oct 13 '15 at 03:59
  • Shakespeare used sheeps in the Love's Labour's Lost: "Two hot sheeps, marry." – ermanen Oct 13 '15 at 19:53
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    @ermanen - but given that he couldn't spell his own name I'm not sure we can entirely trust Bill ! – mgb Oct 13 '15 at 22:27

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I found this Quora question which asked the same thing. The users over there agree that no, sheeps is not a word in English, even though you may have sentences like "the peoples of the world."

From the article about the plural of fish on Grammarist.com

The plural of fish is usually fish, but fishes has a few uses. In biology, for instance, fishes is used to refer to multiple species of fish.

As you can see, "fishes" is only acceptable in biology, and we can assume it is used as a technical term, rather than simply the plural of fish. As pointed out in a comment below, fish is in fact an exception, and uncountable nouns (e.g. sheep, elk) cannot have a plural.

I hope I helped you a bit.

Laurel
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Tommaso Amici
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    Most mass nouns can form a plural in this way, to mean "types of whatever", or "specific instances of whatever": waters, kindnesses, beauties. But count nouns that have the same form in the plural (eg sheep, deer) usually cannot do this - fish is an exception. – Colin Fine Oct 12 '15 at 20:18
  • @Colin Fine I second this. Three fishes in the tank, three quails in the bag. Not sheep. – Albatrosspro Oct 12 '15 at 23:22
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    @ColinFine: Really? Can you cite a reference for that? I don't think so. I think it's rather a general rule that applies to sheeps as kinds of sheep just as much as it applies to deers as species of the deer family (moose and elk are deers), trouts as kinds of trout (e.g., salmons are trouts, meaning all species of salmons are in the trout family), etc. But I don't have a citation to support my feeling either. – Drew Oct 13 '15 at 03:55
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    I haven't a citation, except the negative one that the OED has no example of plural sheeps since 1658, and of deers since 1817; and neither of those examples were in the sense of "kinds of sheep/deer". (It gives dialect ships up to 1890, but still in the ordinary sense of several animals). – Colin Fine Oct 13 '15 at 10:45
  • 'Sheep' is not an uncountable noun—it is just that the singular form is the same as the plural form. You wouldn't say 'there is much sheep over there', would you? – Joe Sep 04 '20 at 22:54
  • Related. – tchrist May 14 '23 at 18:00
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No, you can't apply the same rules for plurals to just any word. There are a number of ways that plurals are derived, and some exceptions as in the "fishes" example you presented; in the case of sheep the plural will always be sheep.

For more information on the formation of plurals have a look at this article on the OED blog titled "The Formation of Plurals, from sheep to minotaurs".

Veronica Grijalva
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    The cited page does not deal with sheeps as breeds of sheep, a la fishes vs fish. It doesn't speak to that at all. It deals only with the plural of sheep individuals, not a collection of kinds of sheep. – Drew Oct 13 '15 at 03:55