Re: palindrome to pluralize

On Mon, 28 Jul 2008 11:52:09 -0400, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
>wrote:
>On 7/28/08, Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@...> wrote:
>>On Sun, Jul 27, 2008 at 10:44 PM, Vincent Pistelli <pva003@...>
>>>wrote:
>>>if the nouns in your language are single syllables you can just turn the
>>>word into a palindrome to make it plural.
>>[maybe it would also] work with words longer than one syllable; though the
>>longer the root words are, the longer the pluralized forms will be, assuming I
>>am reading you correctly (do an inverse reduplication of all or part of the
>>root to pluralize).
I agree with Jim here.  The longer the singular form of the noun, the fewer of
its syllables you'll want to invert-redouble.

Also; Have you considered how this would interact with other inflections of the
nouns, such as case?

>>[snipped stuff Jim said that was good but I don't need to say again]
>>... maybe your reduplication process never adds more than one syllable;
>>with monosyllables it forms a palindrome, with longer words it does not.
>>...
>>There are various other things you could do with a more or less palindromic
>>reduplicative affix like this; I think some time ago someone posted here a
>>link to a study showing the most common uses of reduplication
>>cross-linguistically. I vaguely recall augmentation, diminution, and iterative
>>aspect as being among the common uses.
I seem to recall that too.  If anyone finds the actual link could you re-post it?
Message:
151407 THEORY: Uses of reduplication (Eric Christopherson rakko@... Mar 2,
2008 2:26am)
and its sequelae look promising.

Message:
151434 linguistlist Summary on reduplication  (Benct Philip Jonsson bpj@... Mar
3, 2008 4:25 am)
and its reply also look promising.
They reference these links:
<http://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-52.html>
<http://tinyurl.com/2sha4a>
<http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9501C&L=linguist&P=R4785>

Finally, for more recent particular examples, look at the following threads:
151983 Reduplication in Indonesian  (Kelly Drinkwater mizunomi@... Apr 6, 2008
4:24 am)
153007 Ainu day counting (was: Re: THEORY: Relation between counting, trial,
and plural)  (Alex Fink 000024@... May 21, 2008 5:22 am)
154194 Re: Beekes. (Edgard Bikelis bikelis@... Jul 27, 2008 2:25 pm)

Does anyone have anything else?

>Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
>Inverted reduplication is a nifty idea.
I agree with Mark. I don't see it as any more difficult than ordinary
reduplication, which does indeed indicate plural in many natlangs.