Re: EAK - two problems

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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