Re: Meyadhew

From: "Christopher Wright" <faceloran@...>

> Nik cuendalves:
> >Mau Rauszer wrote:
> >> C5: collective or plural-by-meaning nouns
> >What does the fifth category mean?
>
> A coven (as of witches), an order (as of wizards), a company, a covey, a
> gaggle, etc. They're grammatically singular and semantically (is that the
> right word?) plural. Thus, they would be in C5. At least, that's what it
> would seem to mean, but I'm not Mau.
How would that be related to, say, the use of Arabic broken plurals loaned
into Farsi? Those are cases of plurals functioning as singulars, like
collectives, but actually an inflection of a singular noun rather than a
different word.

(Tech will have four numbers: singular, dual, plural, collective. I might
throw in a fifth number, paucal, in the more distant future, to be used with
the numbers three through five, seven or ten.)