Philip Newton wrote:
> 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?
No.
> 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".)
Possibly - that's why it's in brackets. It's from ancient λαός "people"
so not animates generally, but only (possibly) human animates.
> 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.
I guess it is. We can handle 'sheep' and 'deer' in English, so why not a
few more :)
> 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?
No plural suffix/particle - if context is not sufficient then words like
'a few', 'many' etc could be used. _Possibly_ "people" could be used
with humans.
> 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".)
As in Welsh: _cath_ = cat; _cathod_ = cats. BUT - _tair_ cath = three cats.
So _tria paido_ is obviously plural; we need no further plural marking.
--
Ray
==================================
ray@carolandray.plus.com
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
Nid rhy hen neb i ddysgu.
There's none too old to learn.
[WELSH PROVERB]