Re: QUESTION: types of plurals, few/many

En réponse à Andy Canivet <cathode_ray00@...>:

>
> I don't know if it's likely to occur in a natural language or not - but
> I
> toyed with the idea of a collective plural for my conlang, Komahren.
> I
> haven't decided whether to include it or not - but basically there would
> be
> a singular form, a plural form (multiple objects), and a collective
> inflection for referring to groups of related objects - eg. "the
> police,"
> "women," "people who wear red socks on tuesdays," etc...
>
The collective is a pretty natural feature. Arabic has it IIRC, as did PIE (in
which feminine and neuter plurals are said to come from a former collective,
when the system was active rather than nominative). Collectives are more often
derivative (i.e. you make a new noun with a collective meaning from another
noun) than inflecting, but I don't see why it couldn't exist as an inflecting
number (especially since the limit between inflection and derivation is often a
thin one :)) ).

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.