[lojban] Re: Plurals, was: A (rather long) discussion of {all}

[John E Clifford <lojban-out@lojban.org>]

For what is worth, there are said to be languages with very retricted number systems (not
grammatical number).  The most common is "1, 2, 3, many." there may be a few that go to 4 or 5
before getting a full number system of some sort (IE apparently stopped at 4 once and went on
multiplicatively and additively: 8 is historically the dual form of four, 9 means starting the
count anew, and so on).  The constructed language toki pona has only 1, 2, many and drives its
learners crazy trying say anything bigger than 5 (221 - additive) or so.

  -- 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
> 
> > 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.
> 
> -Nat Krause
> 
>  		
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