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Re: EAK - two problems

From:Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
Date:Monday, May 21, 2007, 17:22
On 5/21/07, R A Brown <ray@...> wrote:
> "to mètró to to-io patró to to-io paído(-laó)"
Where'd the -laó come from in that sentence? I thought it would be restricted to plural personal pronouns. Is it going to be an generic (optional?) plural suffix? Or maybe only for nouns referring to animates? (As, I believe, is the case in Chinese, where -men can be added not only to "pronouns" but also to nouns such as "friend".) Somehow, restricting it to pronouns seems cleaner to me -- in a Romlang or even Hellang, no plural marker seems odd and prone to ambiguity, but if I think about it in Japanese, an unmarked form potentially standing for plural seems fine. It's what you're used to, I suppose. What're your general thoughts on plurals? Marked by a special particle? Usually unmarked but optionally marked by a special particle or suffix? Optionally marked only for animates? What about in conjunction with numbers -- are plural markers (if they exist) allowed after them? (IIRC in Hungarian, for example, a plural marker exists but is not (not usually? never?) used if the noun is counted, as if "I saw cats" but "I saw three cat".) Cheers, -- Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>

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R A Brown <ray@...>