Re: QUESTION: types of plurals, few/many

On Wed, 19 Jun 2002, Karapcik, Mike wrote:

>         [1] Is this represented in any natural languages, or conlangs? I
> know many languages have single, dual, and plural (Arabic and Hawai'ian that
> I've dabbled in, and it's in my Sanskrit text book; I've read it's a fairly
> common setup), some have a trial number, and a scant few even have a quatral
> and quintal number.
>         Do any have a more vague setup? (few / many / enormous / all /
> some-not-all)
In his typology of Number systems, Greville Corbett distinguishes:
singular (1)
dual    (2)
trial   (3)
paucal  (a few)
plural  (more than 1, or more than indicated by any more specific numbers)
greater plural  (an excessive amount, or all the X in the world)

Often the last three exist on a sliding scale: the number of actual
individuals necessary to trigger that type of marking depends on what you
are talking about. Talking about voters (to use your example), you might
use paucal to indicate just 10% of the people despite the fact that it
accounts for 10,000 individuals, whereas in the same language, the plural
could be used to indicate the entire family though there are only four
individuals in that context.

Marcus

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