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

Hi, Geoff, and thanks for writing.
--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Geoff Horswood <geoffhorswood@H...>
wrote:
> One of my conlangs, Noygwexaal, has a regular plural and a
collective
> plural.  The way I use those terms (I have no idea whether this is
correct
> for any other langs), a regular plural
> would be used for things that are
> plural, but of a finite countable number.
That would be what I think is meant (at least, /sometimes/ meant)
by "paucal", or "plural-of-paucity".  In my as-yet-unnamed-and-
unfinished conlang, that will be /exactly/ what is meant by
the "paucal" number.

> The collective plural is used
> for things that are an uncountable number,
(Does "uncountable" mean, "can't be counted at a glance"?  For most
people, three-to-six can be counted at a glance; for professional
sheep-counters etc., "paucal" might refer to somewhat greater
numbers.)

> and also to imply "all of them".
This is covered by the "plural-of-abundance"; the plural that isn't
paucal, in languages that have a paucal.
AFAIK in any language which has a plural distinct from a paucal, "all
of them" is one of the meanings reserved for the plural, not the
paucal.
In my forthcoming conlang, "paucal" will also include any number
whose exact count is known; and "plural" will also include "almost
all with at most paucally many exceptions".

>
> eg. in the sentence "John pulled out his hair",
>
> 1) a singular form of "hair" would mean that John pulled out a
specific
> hair already referred to.
>
> 2) a plural form of "hair" would mean that John pulled out a small
number
> of hairs, or perhaps a handful of his hair.
>
> 3) a collective form of "hair" would mean that John pulled out ALL
of his
> hair.
>
> Does this help at all?
Yes, it does.  My subject line was meant to imply that I wished to
include such distinctions, although the body of my original posting
didn't discuss them at all.

This does make me think of an additional question; how and in what
languages does the paucal-vs.-plural opposition interact with the
distributive-vs.-"collective" opposition?

>
> I haven't a clue what, if any, natlangs do this sort of thing,
though.

As for distributive-vs.-"collective", Ray Brown has given Latin
translations of the two most extreme interpretations of my sample
sentence.  Ray views the differences between the two Latin sentences
as closer to complete re-lexification than to inflection; afaict he's
right about that.

As for paucal-vs.-plural, I think some Pacific languages make this
distinction; at any rate, I remember some examples were pretty easy
to find on Google, once I knew the term "paucal".

You can see why one thing I want to know is, just what are the terms
used by various linguists?

>
> Geoff
Thanks for writing, Geoff.

BTW IIRC I asked earlier this year for examples of natural languages
with both a "trial" and "paucal" in the same language, (distinct from
each other and from "dual" and "plural").  I think a few examples
were given.

Tom H.C. in MI

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