Re: Plurality

On Thu, Apr 17, 2003 at 08:25:31AM -0600, Dirk Elzinga wrote:
> On Thursday, April 17, 2003, at 04:53  AM, Peter Bleackley wrote:
[snip]
> In Miapimoquitch, number is a category which marks predicates rather
> than their arguments, so there is some ambiguity when confronted with a
> sentence like:
>
> wankikipe
> wa= n-  RED-  kipe
> 1=  TR- PAUC- poke
>
> (TR 'transitive', PAUC 'paucal number')
>
> This can mean any of the following:
>
> "I poked (a few of) them."
> "We [=a few of us] poked him."
> "We [=a few of us] poked (a few of) them."
> "I poked him a few times."
>
> In each of these interpretations the idea is that poking took place a
> few times; context is generally sufficient to disambiguate. In addition
> to paucal, there are also distributive and collective numbers.
[snip]

This is very interesting. So potentially there are three (possibly more)
possible number markings on a verb: (1) number agreeing with subject (he
says, they say); (2) number agreeing with object (he hits a man vs. he
hits several men), (3) number indicating plurality of actions (he hits him
many times).

Seems like (3) is a good candidate for addition to Ebisedian. :-)


T

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