Re: No pronoun, no article

Christophe Grandsire wrote:
>
> En réponse à Nik Taylor :
>
> >I would consider it a plural that has other functions.
>
> I'd rather consider it a suffix meaning normally "and others" and which has
> a derived meaning of plural.
Well ... historically, I'm sure you're right, but synchronically, I'd
consider "plural" the main meaning in Modern Japanese.  But, then, since
neither of us are native speakers, I'm not sure which of us is right.
:-)

> (especially since -tachi is not that common as a plural anyway :) )
I dunno; most of the time I hear it, it is as a plural.  The "and
others" use seems to be a less common usage.

It *is* a very useful function, though.  :-)  One I stole in Uatakassi
with the prefix fti-/pati- (first form is used with the singular prefix
ua-, second with the plural suffix uaf-).  However, that has no plural
sense at all, and also has the meaning "group of".  BUt, for example,
you could say _Uaftialana_, from the name tIalana, which would be very
similar to a Japanese _Charanatachi_

Hmm ... maybe there could be some dialects or creoles that would use
uafti- as a plural prefix, via a -tachi like stage, and thence to a pure
plural.  :-)

> >At any rate, there is the archaic -ra used with pronouns, and certain
> >nouns have plural forms formed by reduplication, like hito -> hitobito
> >(person/people), shima -> shimajima (island(s)), etc.
>
> Neither being productive anyway
True.

> so we can still safely say that Japanese doesn't have a plural *per se*.
I dunno, this reminds me of claims that English has no future tense, and
that "will" is actually a modal marker, with future as a secondary use.
My native intuition of English disagrees.

> but then French does have ways to
> indicate precise politeness when necessary, and yet nobody will ever claim
> that French has grammaticalised politeness like Japanese does! :))
Not to the same extent, but it certainly has *some* grammaticalized
politeness, in tu vs. vous, which is still more than English (which,
nevertheless, does still have some non-gramatical ways of indicating
politeness)

--
"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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