Re: Performative verbs (was: Re: here is some stuff i want all of ya'll to look at)

On Wed, 1 Sep 2004 12:06:37 +0200, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> wrote:
> Something I find nifty is the existence of pairs like _mask_, pl _masker_,
> "masque", and _mask_, pl _maskar_, "worm", or _slav_, pl _slavar_, "slave", and
> _slav_, pl _slaver_, "Slav".
Also interesting are words which change gender in the plural.

I'm not sure whether any language has those in the pure form (though I
vaguely remember that Ancient Greek had a few - e.g. ho amnos vs ta
arnia), but there are some which have two plurals: one of the "normal"
gender and one of another.

For example, IIRC Italian "il muro" (masc) has plurals "i muri" (masc)
and "le mure" (fem), with slightly different meanings (walls of a
house vs walls of a city, IIRC).

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>