Re: Noun and noun or noun

At 11:16 AM 5/19/99 +0200, you wrote:
>> "From Http://Members.Aol.Com/Lassailly/Tunuframe.Html" wrote:
>> > How do your conlangs deal with definite, abstract, collective, etc.
nouns ?
>>
>> Using my alternate, more phonemic, orthography
>> Collective: paci- (usually gender 7, but not always), e.g., wapacisaga'
>> = story (lit. "collection of words"), pipacisani' = village (sani' =
>> house), pipacicani' = life (concrete, lit. "collection of years")
>
>I've always seen "collective plurals" used like this to build new words,
>like Arove"n's -e"ad suffix.  Are there any other conlangs which also make
>a collective/separative distinction with the actual plural?
>e.g.
>     "I looked at the houses (C)" = I looked and saw the houses, all of them.
>     "I looked at the houses (S)" = I looked at the one house, and (then)
>        I looked at the other house, etc. (for instance, if the houses in
>        question are across the city from each other and must be looked at
>        individually).
>
>
OK. Kelen, in the latest version, which is not yet on my website, has a
distinction between regular plurals and separate plurals. This does not
mean, however, that the collective plural doesn't have occasionally a
separate meaning. For example: (in simplified spelling, i.e. without accent
marks)

ja mara = a house or the house
ne mara = houses, the houses
an mara = group of houses, village

ja meth = tree
ne meth = trees
an meth = group of trees, forest

ja jel = forest
ne jel = forests
an jel = group of forest, or by extension, the ecosphere.

This is also maintained in pronouns:

ma = 3p neutral
saen = 3p singular
saeth = 3p plural
saenen = 3p collective plural

One would use the collective plural pronoun when speaking of a family or
other such cohesive group, and a non-collective plural otherwise.

Maintaining a collective plural gets to be interesting when dealing with
abstract nouns, and I would tell you more, but I haven't worked it all out
yet.


Sylvia Sotomayor
sylvia1@ix.netcom.com
http://pw2.netcom.com/~sylvia1/