Re: THEORY: Kinds of Plurals, and Methods of Indicating Them

Hello, Chris, thanks for writing.
--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Chris Bates
<chris.maths_student@N...> wrote:
> Distributive in many languages typically implies (as the name
suggests)
> that the events (or entities) are distributed over space and/or
time.
> Many amerindian languages mark distributivity on the verb.
Collectivity
> implies that the events (or entities) are all in one place. I've
mostly
> heard of these terms with reference to events and verbal marking
though,
> and I can't say I'm familiar with nominal plural marking labelled
> distributive or collective.
Thank you.  Can you give me the names of specific Amerindian
languages that do this, or specific authors or books that discuss
them?

The distinction between "distributive" on the one hand,
and "aggregate" or "collective" on the other hand, was apparently
discussed by Frege, a predecessor of Cantor, Russel, and Whitehead.
He apparently was particularly interested in distributive
quantification versus "collective" (if that was the term he used)
quantification.  Since you are a maths student, I am sure you are
aware of this author and are familiar with the distinction he was
making.  This distinction is logically independent of whether or not
the many elements of the set in question are scattered or collected
in space and/or time; the only question is whether or not they are
semantically to be treated as a set or on an each-by-each basis, in
the clause uttered.

(CHAT: BTW what maths do you study?  What is the highest degree you
have attained?  Are you currently teaching or researching something?
and if so what?)

{back on topic):
You seem to be saying that for most Amerindian natlangs
semantic "distributive" is not likely to arise in the absence of
spatial or temporal distribution.  That kind of thing is the sort of
thing that does happen in natural languages, isn't it?  In my sample
sentence, "two students gave three teachers four books", it is tough
to imagine the maximally-distributive event(s) as occuring all at
once in the same time and the same place.

I imagine that it makes sense for the distributive-vs.-collective (or
distributive-vs-aggregate, or whatever the correct terminology is,)
opposition to be marked on the verb as part of its agreement with the
number of the argument, rather than as part of the number of the
nominal (, in languages where it is marked anywhere at all).
Grammatical "number", as marked on nominals and pronominals, is much
simpler than actual numerals; it is probably going to skip this extra
distinction.

But, is anyone aware of a language in which the distributive-vs.-
collective opposition of plurality is marked on the nominal?

----
Thanks for writing.
Tom H.C. in MI