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Re: Plurality

From:Karapcik, Mike <karapcm@...>
Date:Wednesday, April 16, 2003, 16:40
| -----Original Message-----
| From: H. S. Teoh
| Subject: Plurality
|
| An interesting thought occurred to me today. I've noticed
| that in languages that mark number on the verb, the number
| agrees with the number of the subject/agent. But has
| anyone thought about marking the number of the *object*
| on the verb instead? How possible is it to have the verb
| agree with the subject on person, but agree with the
| *object* on number?

        Agree with person for the subject, but number for object?
        Hmmm... That sounds like it would be quite rare.

 In some languages (I think Georgian for one, and some South American
languages), there is a set of affixes that indicate person and number for both
subject and object. Klingon also does this.

 From my very scant knowledge of Muskogee, some verbs have verb root clusters,
with different roots for a verb if the object is singular or plural. The person
marker agreed with the subject, but for a few verbs, the root agreed with the
number of the object. This is probably the closest think I know of to what you
are talking about.

        Mike K.

______________________________________
Mike Karapcik   *       Tampa, FL
Network Analyst *       USF campus
H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Research Center
ConlangCode: v1.1 CIT !h+ !u cG:M:R:S:G a+ y n30:3
B+++/R:Wic A+ E+ N1 Is/d K ia-:+ p-- s- m o P S----
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Peter Bleackley <peter.bleackley@...>