Re: THEORY: Relation between counting, trial, and plural

Eric C. wrote:
<<
Here is a summary of counting days from 1 to 5:

"one day"	_sine to_
"two days"	_tutko_
"three days"	_rerko_
"four days"	_ine rerko_
"five days"	_asikne rerko_

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"!
 >>

Lord help the morpheme-based morphologist!  I suppose days
in excess of three undergo specialized "three deletion" before
spellout.  This operation, of course, crashes if there isn't a number
C commanding /rerko/ to license three deletion, which explains
why /rerko/ means "three days" and not "zero days".

Seriously, though, this is similar to Middle Egyptian--the writing
system, at least.  The spoken system was fairly straight-forward.
With a male noun like "pr", "house", you get:

pr = 1 house
prwy = 2 houses
prww = 3 or more houses (i.e., plural)

In the writing, this was indicated by using the plural determinative,
which was three lines.  With a good number of common glyphs,
the glyph was repeated three times to indicate the plural (though
it wasn't repeated two times for the dual*).  So, for example, ntr =
"god", and it kind of looks like a flag, I always thought.  Let me
see if I can find an image of it somewhere...

<http://www.omniglot.com/images/langnames/nm_hieroglyphs2.gif>

The flag looking thing second from the right is /ntr/ (which we
pronounced ['nE.tSr=] in my class).  That's the singular.  The plural,
/ntrw/, would be a special glyph like that repeated three times.
While I look for an image, below you'll find an image of the plural
determinative (lower right hand corner):

<http://www.ancientegyptonline.co.uk/images/commondeterminatives.jpg>

Okay, this isn't ideal, but you can see the plural of "god",
/ntrw/, on page 153 of the book below (searchable via
Google books):

<http://books.google.com/books?id=-
O68SHvcLlUC&pg=PA153&lpg=PA153&dq=hieroglyphic+gods
+ntrw&source=web&ots=q_Jvi_gNzN&sig=uV8r39uxNL65nyPGY5Mia9KjRe0#PPA153,M
1>

When you wanted to count something (e.g., four beds, five
gods), there seemed to be two options.  Either the noun was
in the singular, and the number indicated what the number
was, or the noun was in the plural.  In the latter case, you do
get rather interesting results.  I wish I could show you this
picture, but the page isn't on the Google books preview (I
need page 100, and they have up to page 99, and then after
108!).  In my book, they've written out "4 times", zpw 4, and
the way it's written is you have the glyphs that spell out
/zpw/, then the plural demonstrative (three vertical lines in
a horizontal row), and then, to the right of that, four vertical
lines to indicate that it's four.

Though this purely in the written component of the language,
I'm entirely unsurprised to see an oral equivalent in a natural
language.  If you have singular, dual and other, it makes sense
to have the other stand for three or more.  /rerko/ appears
to have associated with it the meanings of "three" and plural,
since three or more is plural.  As such, if you wanted the noun
to agree with the plurality of the number, it makes sense to
use the form that has plural associated with it: /rerko/.


* Well shut my mouth!  They do indeed have examples where
you repeat the symbol twice to form the dual!

-David
*******************************************************************
"A male love inevivi i'ala'i oku i ue pokulu'ume o heki a."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."

-Jim Morrison

http://dedalvs.free.fr/