Re: Unusual number inflection

Jim Henry wrote:
>Have any of y'all used such unusual number inflection in
>your conlangs?
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Ithkuil takes the concept of number and adds an entire meta-layer which
first asks whether a noun is "plural" because it is part of a componential
set, assortment, arrangement, segmented composite, fuzzy set, etc.  Thus, a
group of 20 trees may indeed contain a plural number of trees, but what is
more important is that together they constitute a conceptual gestalt
defined by a single purpose, e.g., an "orchard".  Therefore, the Ithkuil
inflection of the word "tree" would indicate this composite arrangement.
The particular morphological categories involved are "Configuration"
and "Affiliation", the former defining the physical arrangement or set
pattern, while the latter indicates the defining purpose (or lack thereof)
for the Configuration.  The nine Configurations are UNIPLEX, DUPLEX,
DISCRETE, AGGREGATIVE, SEGMENTATIVE, COMPONENTIAL, COHERENT, COMPOSITE, and
MULTIFORM.  The four Affiliations are CONSOLIDATIVE, ASSOCIATIVE,
VARIATIVE, and COALESCENT.

Once the Configuration and Affiliation have been established, then the
speaker determines the "number" of particular instantiations of the
Configurative/Affiliative set via a category called "Perspective" which is
the closest equivalent to the Number category of other languages.

If you're interested in the details on all of this plus examples, see
Chapter 3 of the online Ithkuil grammar.

--John Quijada