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No more plural? No,more plural!:-- Gramm. Numbr when Non-Integer Semantic #

From:tomhchappell <tomhchappell@...>
Date:Wednesday, August 17, 2005, 23:48
Hello, Henrik, and everyone.
Henrik, your conlang's grammatical-number system inspired me to ask
of the list a question I had upon reading Corbett's "Number".
--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Henrik Theiling <theiling@A...> wrote:
> [snip] > Further, Qthyn|gai has number endings for 'expected amount', > 'unexpected amount', 'known amount', 'unknown amount', 'explicitly > unmentioned amount', 'regularly distributed', 'irregularly > distributive', '1', '2', '3', 'not 1 (=general plural)', '0', > 'absof*inglutely none', 'all', 'absof*inglutely all', 'many', 'quite > many', 'very many', 'some', 'few', 'not so few'. I think that's
about
> it... :-))) > > I had trouble coming up with Latin names for them. I have normal
ones
> 'paucal', 'oligal', 'plural' but also 'latoligal' and 'tenuplural'
and
> 'superomnial' and 'subnullar'. :-))) > > The list is here: > http://www.theiling.de/conlang/s7/s_05.html#06_01 > [snip]
The review of Corbett's "Number" mentions "nullar number", but that concept is nowhere discussed in Corbett's book. However, he does point out that different natlangs use different grammatical numbers for the same semantic mixed fraction, even when the two natlangs in question have basically the same number system. For instance, English and French both have "singular vs plural" systems (just two grammatical numbers). But, in English, we would generally say "One-and-a-half days"; in French on dirait "OK, let's quit pretending Tom can speak French", I mean, something like "One- and-one-half day". (Or so Corbett says.) So, of course, I got to thinking, what system would a language with nullar and dual and trial (and maybe paucal) numbers use for fractional amounts? One accepted system in science is to round to the nearest whole number; and, in case of a tie, to the nearest even number. Pretend singular and trial are odd, and nullar, dual, and paucal are even (letting paucal stand in for quadral). This would make 1/3 day-NULLAR 1/2 day-NULLAR 2/3 day-SINGULAR 1+1/3 day-SINGULAR 1+1/2 day-DUAL 1+2/3 day-DUAL 2+1/3 day-DUAL 2+1/2 day-DUAL 2+2/3 day-TRIAL 3+1/3 day-TRIAL 3+1/2 day-PAUCAL 3+2/3 day-PAUCAL Has anyone else given this any thought in any of their conlangs? Is anyone aware of any study of this sort of thing in natlangs? ----- While looking at people's conlangs' grammatical-number paradigms surfed to through posts to this thread, I ran across one conlanger's macro-paragraph entitled "Complex Numbers". It turned out the conlanger meant numbers bigger than what, in his/her conlang, would be analogous to our n-digit numbers for some n (I don't remember whether n was 2 or 3 or 4 or 6). But the discussion about Chinese time had gotten me thinking about complex numbers (a real number plus some real multiple of the square root of -1). I wonder, does anyone's conlang handle complex numbers of that type? ----- Speaking of Chinese time: I posted a big thread-starter some time ago about all the various genders that might be needed by a multi-species pan-galactic interstellar society including artificial intelligences and sophont member species having alternative reproductive strategies. The same impulse prompts me to ask about a tense system for time-travellers. A society of time-travelers who meet at a particular time may need to specify "past" or "future" in three different time-scales: Speaker's past vs Speaker's future; Addressee's past vs Addressee's future; Subject's past vs Subject's future ("Subject" = subject of sentence.). That leads to 9 tenses, or maybe 11, since the Speaker's Present and the Addressee's Present will be the same moment, and we can assume that the Subject's Present takes place in the Speaker's and Addressee's Present. (Maybe the Subect's Past or Future could overlap the Speaker's and Addressee's Present, however.). ----- I'm serious about that. Is anyone aware of a conlang that addresses such an issue? Truth be told, such a thing would come in handy in natlangs, too, in narratives involving prophecy. ----- Throw in Alternate Time Lines, and it could get more complicated; since a given present moment could have more than one past as well as more than one future, and a given past moment could lead to more than one present moment. That was kind of why I suggested Time as a Complex Number in that thread. "Sideways Time" was "Irrealis", I suggested; and a tense could be some "linear combination" of Realis (past = negative (? or positive ?), present = zero, future = positive (or the opposite of past, at any rate) with Irrealis (a 0 "imaginary part" meaning "nothing but realis" just as a 0 "real part" would mean "nothing but present"). Of course I couldn't figure out what the difference would be between positive and negative Irrealis time. Well, "Time as a Complex Number" was, I admit, kind of a joke for this group/list; but, seriously, handling multiple time streams (or alternate time lines) seems like the natural next step after Tenses for Time Travelers. Has anyone given it any thought, or done any work on it; or, is anyone aware of anyone else who has? Thank you. Tom H.C. in MI

Replies

taliesin the storyteller <taliesin-conlang@...>Timetravel tenses (was Re: No more plural? ..)
Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@...>