Re: The Language Code

Hi!

Dirk Elzinga <dirk_elzinga@...> writes:
> n       number
>         s       singular
>         d       dual
>         t       trial
>         p       plural
>         f       paucal ("just a Few things")
>         a       distributive ("things All over the place")
>         g       collective ("things Grouped together")
>         ...
Hmm, isn't that distributive vs. collective, i.e., a different
category than mere number?  Or am I wrong there?  I thought e.g. the
English numbers are all distributive and to get a collective meaning,
you either use a different word (like 'cattle') or use
'herd'/'flock'/'swarm'/'group'.  But maybe I got that wrong.

My current conlang research project (*grin*) has nullar, singular,
dual, trial, plural, paucal and 'any-number' (the default without
morpheme is 'unspecified number').  By default, they are all
distributive(?), but they can be applied more than once, making all
but the last one collective:

   cat.PLURAL       =   (several) cats
   cat.PLURAL.DUAL  =   two (groups/sets/...) of (several) cats

The 'any-number' makes collectives without constraining the number,
so:
   cat.PLURAL.ANY   =   (groups/group) of (several) cats

By the way, I don't know the following terms in the syntax|arg
category:

> >>                h       hierarchical
What's that?

> >>                t       topic/focus
What's that?  (I know what topic and focus are, but how can they be
used for argument structure?)

**Henrik

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