Re: Semantic differentiation of "kinds"

I found some examples at Wiki about Bahasa Indonesia

Tiga ekor sapi  "three tail cow" = three cows
Sepuluh orang tentara "ten people soldier" = ten soldiers
Lima lembar / helai/ carik kertas "five sheet / piece paper"
                                                                = five sheets/pieces  of paper
Sebalas buah apel "eleven fruit apple" = eleve apples


So my memory about this from  when I tried to learn some Indonesian about
25 years ago, was right  !-)

Ingmar


On Sun, 25 May 2008 15:54:20 -0400, Ingmar Roerdinkholder
<ingmar.roerdinkholder@...> wrote:

>Isn't that existing in Austronesian languages as Indonesion/Malay, Tagalog,
>Malagassy etc?
>
>I don't remember very well, but I think these languages have things like:
>
>one tail buffalo = one buffalo
>one man driver = one driver
>one plant flower = one flower
>
>That what you mean?
>
>Ingmar
>
>On Sat, 24 May 2008 16:44:39 -0500, Eric Christopherson
><rakko@...> wrote:
>
>>I'm working on a diachronic conlang, based on a preexisting
>>protolanguage which gives a lot of room for innovation. I'd like to
>>have it evolve adjective markers, and it occurred to me to use a noun
>>meaning something like "kind" and have it evolve into a suffix, e.g.
>>"red-kind house" = "red house", or maybe with a genitive particle:
>>"red-kind-GEN house".
>>
>>Also it occurred to me that this marker could agree with nouns
>>according to whether they describe inanimate objects, animals, or
>>people; thus I would like to use one word/suffix that means "kind (of
>>thing)", one that means "kind (of animal)", and one that means "kind
>>(of person)".
>>
>>My question is: do any natlangs have these separate words for kinds
>>depending on what they refer to? I am thinking maybe a word meaning
>>"breed" could be used for animals, and a word meaning "people" or
>>"race" can apply to persons, but I want the word to be at once a)
>>specific to humans and b) otherwise really generic, i.e. it could be
>>used to mean "race", "gender", "age group", "description", etc. Does
>>this kind of word exist in natlangs?
>>
>>(The same word, when used on its own and not as a suffix, would
>>probably evolve later into a word with more specific meaning, like
>>"race" or "gender".)