Re: Strong Plurals?
| From: | Sally Caves <scaves@...> |
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| Date: | Wednesday, June 4, 2003, 3:42 |
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----- 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, feminine o-stems, u-stems.
Welsh plurals are legion, but don't come near the maggelitous quality of
this list of plurals!
Sally Caves
scaves@frontiernet.net
Eskkoat ol ai sendran, rohsan nuehra celyil takrem bomai nakuo.
"My shadow follows me, putting strange, new roses into the world."
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/teonoun.html
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