Re: THEORY: Number and animacy

Thanks to everyone who replied! The Nahuatl situation
corresponds closely to what I have in mind for Kijeb, except
that in Kijeb there would be only one way to form the
plural, and it would be obligatory for animate nouns.

I found another interesting system, inverse number, which
is tempting to copy: it basically basically means that for
animates singular is the expected number, while for
inanimates plural is the expected number, and there is a
single marker which marks animates as plural and
inanimates as singular. See WP <http://tinyurl.com/vz3uu>.
ANADEW indeed!

In either case it is conceivable that the Kijeb number
marking system broke down in Sohlob, especially if a change
in world view caused words to migrate between the inanimate
and animate categories -- since in all languages with an
animate/inanimate distinction there are some words which are
animate although the phenomena they designate are not
'scientifically' animate, and frequently some scientifically
animate phenomena are grammatically inanimate as well.

I don't know if it would seem unrealistic that Kijeb
pronouns are marked for number whether animate or not.
Sohlob and the other daughter languages of Kijeb basically
have a collective vs. singulative system in that the
unmarked noun is normally indefinite plural in meaning,
while indefinite singular takes a clitic numeral 'one' and
definite nouns (singular or plural) take pronoun
determiners, directly inherited from Kijeb numbered
pronouns, which carry the number information. The
pronominal plural markers were not lost through
phonological attrition since unlike the noun plural markers
they were infixal and also caused some sandhi changes in
the stems they were infixed into. The page
<http://wiki.frath.net/Kijeb#Pronouns> as it stands
actually contains two alternative explanations for these
plurals. I'm definitely leaning towards the reduplication
explanation, in which case plural may be entirely optional
for all Kijeb nouns, and expressed by reduplication, maybe
partial as in Nahuatl.

BTW the reason I overlooked the case of PIE neuter plurals
is that as I understand it collectives in _-h2_ are
originally a specialization of the plurals rather than the
other way around. The singular agreement in Greek is
probably an innovation, as it has no parallels elsewhere.

/BP 8^)>
--


/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se

    a shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot

                                 (Max Weinreich)

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