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Re: Do you want a French "little" or a Dutch "little"? :))

From:Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>
Date:Monday, June 3, 2002, 21:53
Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> Still, I don't think many people thought of that. We tend to take > quantifiers for granted, without realising that even they aren't > semantically universal.
That's a good thing to think about. The closest I've come is the paucal vs. plural distinction in the first person. Essentially, paucal is "a few of us", and plural is "many of us", but the distinction depends on context. In most contexts, around half a dozen or so is the cut-off, but paucal can also be used to emphasize that there were/are many fewer than expected. Like, say, at an even where you expected a few thousand to show up, if there were only a few hundred you might possibly use the paucal. This distinction exists in Classical Uatakassi only in the first person, and was completely lost in Low Uatakassi and the descendants thereof. -- "There's no such thing as 'cool'. Everyone's just a big dork or nerd, you just have to find people who are dorky the same way you are." - overheard ICQ: 18656696 AIM Screen-Name: NikTaylor42