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Re: Agglutinating -> inflecting

From:Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Date:Thursday, June 26, 2003, 18:04
Quoting Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>:

> En réponse à Mark J. Reed : > > > >AJ> I meant anade_w_ism literally > > > >Okay, I give up. What's an anadewism? > > Another Natlang Already Does it Except Worse ;))) . The main purpose > of > Maggel is to break this rule ;))) .
"_A_ Natlang ...", you mean. Or have you lied to us about the origin of Maggel? :-)
> >CG> Hehe, you should take a look at the Arabic number system. Check > the > >CG> "Turkish and Arabic" message at > >CG> http://www.livejournal.com/community/linguaphiles/327787.html. > > > >Wow! > > My reaction exactly! ;))) > > > >In Methkaeki, all quantifiers, including numbers, are suffixes, so > >you don't say "three men"; you say "manthree". The generic plural is > >a suffix meaning "some", but it's only used when the exact number is > >unknown; otherwise the number itself functions as a plural marker. > > It's exactly how my Azak works. Azak is extremely agglutinating, and > number > is optional on nouns. If you want to indicate plural without specifying > how > much, you use the suffix -ar: various. If you want to indicate an > exact > number, you use the number suffixes. If you don't add any number suffix, > it > *doesn't* indicate singular, just that number is unknown or already > known > by context or unimportant for the discussion.
So the numeral "one" essentially works as a singular suffix? Andreas

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Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>