Re: Evolution of Plural Markers

On Fri, 30 Jan 2004 16:16:57 -0800, Steve Cooney <stevencooney@...>
wrote:

>I take it from your question that you think plural
>marker(s) are a good thing, and that not having them
>means a limitation of some kind. ?
No.  I just think that plural markers necessarily arise from former stand-
alone words in languages that do not have such markers.

>Are you assuming that 'undeveloped' languages don't
>have such markers?  In looking at Chinese, which is a
>good example where a language has rather non-english
>plurality - "wo3" means "my", "we", and "our" - there
>is indeed a different spin on describing plurality,
>but this is generally left to context.
In my opinion, there is no such thing as an "undeveloped" language,
objectively speaking.  Any such descriptions of languages are completely
subjective (i.e. a matter of opinion).

- Rob