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Re: [lojban] Plurals, was: A (rather long) discussion of {all}
On 7/11/06, Nathaniel Krause <nathanielkrause@yahoo.com> wrote:
Maxim Katcharov <maxim.katcharov@gmail.com> wrote:
Are these 'dual/trial numbers' as pervasive as the "1 vs >1"
distinction in those languages? I doubt it. What I would like to see
is a natural language that has one verbiage for, say, 1 and 2 things,
and another for 3 or more. Or perhaps a language that has only few vs
many. Clearly, a language can be constructed with this requirement,
and it's a gamble to say that one shouldn't exist. My point is that
the tendency of many natural languages to draw the line at 1|2+ seems
to indicate something, and I suggest that it is that thought works in
the way that I describe. This isn't an argument for my position, and
my position isn't dependant on this. It is, as I said, just something
to consider.
Grammatical numbers other than plural and singular are almost certainly less
common than the "1 vs >1" distinction. I think it's pretty clear that the
human brain, when interpreting objects as integers, has a strong recognition
of "1 vs. not 1", a somewhat weaker recognition of "2 vs. not 2", a
somewhat weaker recognition of "3 vs. not 3", a still weaker recognition of
"4 vs. not 4", and basically no recognition of numbers larger than that (not
that I'm an expert on this sort of thing). This being the case, it makes
sense that grammatical numbers specifying larger integers would be
progressively less common (Wikipedia says that there are apparently no
languages with a quaternary number).
If I were making a conlang for fun, it would be interesting to include as
many numbers as possible
It would be more fun yet to exclude 1vs!1, and see how people reacted.
> Interestingly, Chinese does have a plural, but it can only be used to
> describe people.
>
Elaborate?
Sure; it's pretty simple. Standard Mandarin has a suffix, -men, which
changes the simple form into a plural form. However, this suffix is only
applied to nouns or pronouns referring to people. For instance, "wo" = I,
"women" = we;"gongren" = worker(s), "gongrenmen" = workers. This suffix is
pretty optional because the simple form of any noun could refer to refer to
one thing or more than one. You could, by analogy, try applying the same
suffix to things which aren't people, for instance "goumen" = dogs,
"fangzimen" = houses, but this is atypical and would be regarded as
incorrect, even if the listener could probably guess what you mean.
Interesting. So gong by itself is open to either the plural or
singular interpretation? How and how long ago did -men come about? For
what reason, I wonder?