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
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