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Re: Singular Pluralities

From:Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>
Date:Friday, July 26, 2002, 18:57
I meant to send this post to the whole list, but it went only to Wes :(( .
Sorry!

En réponse à Wesley Parish <wes.parish@...>:

> Singular Pluralities > > One house stands alone, but a town is full of hice; > A rouse grain starves me, I need a bag of rice; > While monogamy's the habit of only one woufe, > Polygamy's the opposite, of having several wife; > And one louse makes me scratch, > But it's lousy with lots of lice; > There's only one mousetrap, > But oh too many mice. >
Lovely! :)) Makes me want to use all those plurals in my everyday life :))) .
> Read and Enjoy! Any conlangs with similar broken/internal > pluralizations? >
I know it's getting boring, but again Maggel is specialist in those things ;))) . And since it has not two but four numbers (singular, dual, unnumbered plural and numbered plural), it adds to the fun :)) (that, and the fact that the feminine nouns' base form is not the singular but the unnumbered plural ;))) ). Let me give a few examples (all phonetic realisations in X-SAMPA with the usual modifications: ' for primary stress, & for ae-ligature, and with * marking "tension" of the previous consonant): igeid ['kEt]: a cat (masculine) igeaidha ['k&atS@]: two cats igeiisdi ['kUit*I]: cats (unnumbered) igeiidim ['kUit@~m]: cats (numbered) ragft ['r\a~N]: women (unnumbered, feminine) rim ['r\E~]: a woman rajms ['r\a~nz]: two women iragft ['xa~N]: women (numbered) biirh ['bIx_j]: a dog (neuter) ebuira [E'bYx@]: two dogs ebuir [E'bYx]: dogs (unnumbered) ebiir [E'bIx]: dogs (numbered) Well, among those three examples, one is completely regular, while the other two are irregular. Who will be able to guess which is which? ;)))) (it's actually quite simple and can be answered easily although I didn't give other examples :)) ) In Maggel, it's nouns without internal alternations which are exceptional!!! :)) Christophe. http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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John Cowan <jcowan@...>
John Cowan <jcowan@...>