Re: Strong Plurals?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sally Caves" <scaves@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2003 4:37 AM
Subject: Re: Strong Plurals?


> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Joseph Fatula" <fatula3@...>
>
> > More or less accidentally, I derived a language from one of my conlangs
> that
> > has some interesting plural formations.  For example:
> >
> > (sg.) - (pl.)
> > atsa - asto
> > chemu - chenda
> > daja - dazhda
> > egash - egzhu
> > elghi - elghbo
> > kaigu - kaigu
> > kaza - kazda
> > kodu - kodra
> > ngide - ngidra
> > omeiyh - onggha
> > qrat - qrada
> > qule - qulga
> > tachi - tashta
> > temu - tendo
> > tume - tungga
> >
> > How would one best describe this sort of plural formation without
> reference
> > to the older form of the language?  (In this scenario, the people who
> speak
> > Tunggu (this language) do not know anything specific about the language
of
> > their ancestors.)
>
> Classes.  They come from myriad different classes.  English used to have a
> much larger number of noun classes with different plural formations, the
> only ones that really survived being masculine a-stem endings (your
> ubiquitous "s" plural), neuter a-stem (your now very few deer/deer,
> sheep/sheep endings), the very VERY few r-stems indicating familial
> relations (brethren, etc.) and your umlaut nouns (man/men, tooth/teeth,
> foot/feet).  Weak n-declensions dropped out,
What about "oxen"?

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