Re: No plural morpheme

I'm not sure about Japanese, but I know Chinese does this, and it
seems to have worked pretty well for them for a very long time.

The conlang I'm developing for my fantasy book series works this way,
and so far so good. In some cases, it's obvious from the context
whether I'm talking about singular or plural, and in many other cases,
singular/plural simply doesn't matter for clarity of the sentence. And
in the cases where it does matter, it's easy to add a modifier (such
as a numeral) to make it clear.

Chris
http://rettstatt.wordpress.com/
http://kaimiracode.com/


On Nov 24, 2007 6:34 AM, caeruleancentaur <caeruleancentaur@...> wrote:
> I enjoy reading fantasy lit.  Sometimes the authors use archaic
> language in the mouths of some of the characters.  I recently read one
> character saying, "It's seven mile away...."
>
> I'm trying to keep Senjecan grammar as uncluttered as possible.  I
> thought that I might not use a plural morpheme if the plurality of the
> noun was obvious as when, say, a number qualified the noun.
>
> What are your experiences with this in either a natlang or your
> conlang?  I believe that Japanese does this.
>
> Charlie
>