Re: Animal plurals/collective nouns (was Re: Re: irregularconlangs)

Eric wrote:

>Hey! That reminds me: does anyone know why English has such bizarre plurals
>and collective nouns for animals? A lot of wild animal names seem to be the
>same in the singular and plural, such as buffalo, moose, etc.
>
>I mean things such as a pride of lions, gaggle of geese,
>etc. Some of these words are so out there as to make me think someone
>invented them to be silly, such as a memory of elephants. But how did they
>reach such currency?
>
>Obligatory conlang content: Does anyone's conlang do this? :)
Tech does, but not just for animals, but for all nouns.  There are four
numbers: singular, dual, 'small' plural (or 'several' or 'paucal'), and
'great' plural (or 'multiple', 'total' or 'collective').  The first three
are formed basically from suffixes (I'll probably have _-ni_ > _-in_ for the
'small' plural), but the last one is similar to the Arabic 'broken plural'
(and Germanic plurals formed by umlaut, which also is found in Tech).  So I
might have _bank_ for 'bank', with the dual 'bankan', small plural 'bankin',
and large plural 'bunuuk' [bu'nUkw] meaning not only 'many banks', but also
'the banking system as a whole'.  The number system is actually cyclic, and
you could theoretically treat a great plural as a singular (then it really
would mean 'collective'), and then have dual, plural etc. from there!  I
wonder what a 'plural of plurals' would connotate...

Danny

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