Re: Greenberg's Word Order Universals

Lars Henrik Mathiesen wrote:

<snip>

> No, it means that if there is one of the numbers that has only
> unmarked forms, it's the singular. You can have any of these:
>
>   All nouns take marks for both singular and plural.
>
>   Some nouns have a marked singular, some have a marked plural, some
>   have both.
>
>   Some nouns have a marked singular, some have a marked plural, none
>   have both. (Old French was almost like this at one stage, I think).
>
>   All nouns have an unmarked singular and a marked plural. (Spanish).
>
>   All nouns have an unmarked singular, some have an marked plural.
>   (English).
>
> But not this:
>
>   Some or all nouns have a marked singular, none have a marked plural.
>
Ah. It becomes clearer all the time.

> > It also means that there is always some way to mark the plural, if only
> > in the pronouns (as in Mandarin).  Some languages have a mark for the
> > singular, some don't.  Languages with dual (exactly two) and trial
> > (exactly three) numbers almost always have marks for them.
> >
> > ...where "mark" means suffix, or prefix, or change of vowels, or suppletion,
> > or what have you.
>
> And if a language only marks number in the pronouns, and does it by
> suppletion (different stems, like English I/we, she/they), you might
> wonder how one of them can be said to be more marked than the other.
>
> Never fear, your friendly neighbourhod theorist will tell you that the
> singular is the underlying form --- which he knows because he writes
> it as -plural --- and thus unmarked, so that the universal holds.
Good ol' theorists. Always proving their theories by using the theories
in question.

--
Robert