Re: THEORY: Relation between counting, trial, and plural
| From: | Eric Christopherson <rakko@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, August 28, 2007, 6:30 |
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On Aug 28, 2007, at 12:32 AM, Eric Christopherson wrote:
[...]
> There are a few interesting things here. First, the word for "day
> (s)" seems to have an allomorph _to_ for just one day, and _ko_ for
> other numbers of days. Second, _tutko_ and _rerko_ look as though
> they might be formed by reduplicating the forms for "two" and
> "three" and then adding _ko_. Now, what I find really interesting
> is how you say "four (or more) days" -- you use a numeral plus the
> word which (by itself) means "three days"!
>
> Are there any other natlang examples of things like this? I could
> have sworn that I used to know of one, but I've forgotten it.
Ah, I remembered it! Actually, in the case I was thinking of, the
bare plural seems to refer to two, not three. Revelation 12:14 has "a
time, and *times*, and half a time" (emphasis added), which Wikipedia
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_%28archangel%29 ) says means
"three and a half years". I.e. "times" without a specific number is
taken to mean "two times". I'm no Biblical scholar, so I don't know
how reasonable that is -- and it occurs to me that maybe the original
Greek used the dual instead of the plural.
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