Re: Nouns for things that occur in pairs

Eric Christopherson wrote:
> I remember reading somewhere that some languages have a special marking
> for nouns for things that normally occur in pairs. What do you call this
> phenomenon? Is it an example of grammatical number (and if so, what is
> that number called?) And does anyone how those markings evolved?
Singulative? Nomen unitatis?

There exist very specific examples in Sindarin:

gwanu^n "pair of twins" - gwanunig "twin"
lhaw "ears (of one person)" - lhewig "one ear".

Vlad.

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