Re: Singular Pluralities

On Fri, Jul 26, 2002 at 10:00:01PM +0200, Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> En réponse à John Cowan <jcowan@...>:
>
> >
> > A punning comment on polygamy:  "The plural of 'spouse' is 'spice'."
> >
>
> LOL
>
> I have to have some words in Maggel which behave like that (meaning, having a
> plural form identical to a singular word of different meaning, or variations on
> the same theme :))) ). But I suppose there are already conlangs out there which
> do that ;))) . Right?
[snip]

I've mentioned this before, but in Ebisedian, the feminine of _kaji'_,
"head", is _kacii'_, which is very close to _kaci'_, a neuter noun
referring to a plant with red flowers. The plurals of both are identical:
_3kacii'_ could either be many women's heads, or many plants with red
flowers. This could lead to slightly offensive puns, hmmm. :-P

Another pun involved the masculine of _tagi'_ "finger", which is _Ta'gi_.
An unrelated word, _Tagi'_, means "large". In this case, there isn't
actually an overlap (the plural forms are distinct), it's just the
similarity ot the pronunciations that could potentially lead to blunders.


T

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