Re: Quantifiers and negation with unusual grammatical number

* Isidora Zamora said on 2003-12-17 00:47:05 +0100
> As some of you may remember, I have given Índumom Tovlaugadóis no less
> than four grammatical numbers.
*shake hands* meet my Taruven, also with four, or five, depending on
who's counting: singular, dual, paucal (3 to 5) and plural, and maybe
`nullar' in addition. The paucal is used for things that come in a set
amount, like the 11 football player-PAUCAL[*], or the dozen egg-PAUCAL
(and then you strictly don't need the number), and if it is used on
something that doesn't have an implicit plurality, it means the objects
in question are few enough to tell apart from a distance, -or- that
there are between three to five of them, inclusive. The nullar is really
a variant of a noun-negation, saying that there are zero objects of that
type, not that no objects of that type exists. So 'there are no unicorns
here' would use the usual negative while `there are no conspiracies
here' would use the nullar. So `none' is taken care of :)

> In the process, I have given myself no less than a logical headache.
Ugh, wrinklifying oldfeeling nasties, those.

> I can deal with the idea of four categories for number, or I wouldn't
> have put it into the language, but my brain starts running in logical
> circles as soon as I try to use quantifiers or negation with
> Tovlaugadóis nouns.
>
> As soon as I start using negation, things can start going a little
> loopy.  "I don't have plural.flute" could still be construed to mean
> that I have five of them, since five falls under the language's
> threshold for plural. [..] Which brings me to my next point.
>
> What is the proper grammatical number to use when asking "Do you have
> any flutes?"  Do I use the plural as I do in English?  The problem is
> that Tovlaugadóis has three separate number categories that all
> correspond to the English plural.
You could make a chart: negating this leads to this, some-ing this leads
to this etc.

       singular | paucal | plural | multal
neg      none      sing     pauc     plur
some
any
all
every

etc., you get the idea, but you don't *have* to be complex. You could
say that if you have an explicit quantifier, you can't also have
grammatical number. Or you could work out multivalued logic... There
are several good descriptions of trinary logic on the web.

> What do I do when I want to negate existence and say "There weren't
> any skirts"?  "There weren't any skirts" (i.e. skirts didn't exist
> then) means something different than the singular "There wasn't any
> skirt," [..]
>
> Let's see if I can figure out the semantics of a non-negated "any"
> with each of the four numbers.
>
> I can figure out that "every" should be paired with a singular noun,
> as it is in English, and that "all" should be paired with the paucal,
> plural, or multal, depending [..]
>
> I'm not certain that I'm up to trying to tackle the semantics of
> "some" in Tovlaugadóis; I think it could get real complicated real
> fast.
Why do you copy the English quantifiers? All, each, every, any, some,
none... many natural languages make do with a much smaller set. (My L1
doesn't have "any", and "all" and "every" is one word [usually].)


[*] There is only one true form of football, and the only way to move
that ball around is with the feet or with the head, so there. I refuse
to use the `s'-word :)


t., have I mentioned that exam-time is over. Well it is. Yay. *faint*

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