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Re: Number in Trentish

From:Herman Miller <hmiller@...>
Date:Friday, December 14, 2001, 5:18
On Thu, 13 Dec 2001 10:14:55 -0500, Muke Tever
<alrivera@...> wrote:

>I noticed this kind of English sentence: > > There are mice in the house. > There are mice in the corner. > >And, just for the sake of evil, felt like disambiguating them. > >"What's to disambiguate?" you say! Well, when we talk about 'mice in the >house', we don't place them anywhere, so long as they're in there: there could >be mice in my sock drawer, grandma's chest in the attic, and at the computer >desk. But with 'mice in the corner', we place them together. (The only reason >for this is because the meaning of 'corner' makes it necessary--and the example >easier.)
Hmm.... I've been gradually introducing plural forms to Tirèlhat. The usual way of indicating plural is with a prefix on the verb and a different form of the case marker. Vëgavithaz saj kuvivi vè ruba. vë-gavi -tha-z saj kuvivi vè ruba 3p-exist NOM.PL house-mouse LOC house But Tirèlhat also has plural suffixes used with certain words, like the collective plural -dhaj (as in a flock of starlings "margadhaj", or a swarm of free-tailed bats "parzdhaj"). There's also the "mass plural" -èk for collections of small things considered as a mass: "sulèk" (beans) or "fÿorhèk" (the infamous "chad" from punch-card ballots), and the "generic plural" -az which refers to all beings of the same kind ("rojaz" = humankind, "nikaz" = mousekind). I have a feeling that Tirèlhat has a lot more plural-type suffixes that I haven't discovered yet. There's also a difference between "in" the house and "in" the corner, but Tirèlhat can use a simple locative case for both of them. I like the idea of a small-group plural. I think I could use something like that in Tirèlhat: Vëgavithaz sè kuvivisath vè xhigh. vë-gavi -tha-z sè kuvivi -sath vè xhigh 3p-exist NOM house-mouse-SGPL LOC corner (Note that, just to be confusing, plural endings require a plural prefix on the verb to agree with them, but the case marker is in the singular form!) -- languages of Azir------> ---<http://www.io.com/~hmiller/lang/index.html>--- hmiller (Herman Miller) "If all Printers were determin'd not to print any @io.com email password: thing till they were sure it would offend no body, \ "Subject: teamouse" / there would be very little printed." -Ben Franklin