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[lojban] Re: A (rather long) discussion of {all}
I confess I haven't been reading this thread, whose interminability reminds me of the olden days of Lojban list. So forgive me if I repeat things that have already been said.
1. I believe that there are implicational universals governing grammatical number distinctions, namely if there are only two categories they are singular and plural, if there is a trial then there is a dual, and so forth. For the unlazy, see Corbett's _Number_ (reference on the Wiki page).
2. It was my immersion in lojbanology that made me realize that there is something somehow fundamental to the singular--plural distinction, in that only plurals, and not singulars, are sensitive to a collective--distributive distinction.
3. It may be hard to prove that typological patterns across languages reflect human cognition rather than human cognition reflecting unexplained typological patterns. But the former (counterwhorfian) direction of causation is more explanatory.
--And.
John E Clifford, On 12/07/2006 00:30:
--- Maxim Katcharov <maxim.katcharov@gmail.com> wrote:
On 7/11/06, Jorge Llamb�as <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:
Maxim Katcharov <maxim.katcharov@gmail.com> wrote:
I don't suggest that a language would not function without plurals,
but that it's odd that the line was drawn between 1 and 2. Without an
explanation for this, one would think that there are languages out
there that have a pervasive plural that makes itself known between 2
and 3, for example.
There are such languages. See:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_number> for some examples.
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.
Since this sounds a little like one pseudo-Whorfian hypothesis case, I give the usual counter:
maybe people tend to make a strong divide between 1 and >1 because so many languages have a
singular/plural distinction. Causation is hard to work out when the two phenomena are known only simultaneously.
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