Re: No more plural? No, more plural!

Hi!

tomhchappell <tomhchappell@...> writes:
>...
> > --as well as collective and distributive dual.
> > Collective plural represents "all of the".
> > Distributive plural represents "each/every of the"
> > /The:COLL teachers gave one book to the:COLL students./
>
> Nice.  Marking the "determiner" (or "article") -- a newish idea, to
> me -- rather than either the verb or the noun (strategies I mentioned
> in that post you referred to.)
Oh, you don't need to go far: German and (Spoken) French do this.

German:
    Ich sehe den     Jungen.
    I   see  the     boy
             def.sg.

    Ich sehe die     Jungen.
    I   see  the     boys
             def.pl.

French:
    Je vois l'homme.
    [Z vwa  lOm]

    Je vois les hommes.
    [Z vwa lez Om]

    -s on the noun is not pronounced (here), so the article is the
    only place to infer the number.

BTW, in German, sometimes number is encoded in quite superficial ways:

    mit  den Jungen   -  with    the boys
    ohne den Jungen   -  without the boy

!!

The point is that 'mit' triggers dative case and 'ohne' triggers
accusative case.  And the article has the same form in dative plural
and accusative singular.  And the noun also has the same form for
singular and plural (only nominative singular is 'Junge', all others
are 'Jungen').

(And if you say that 'Junge' is a bad example since modern spoken
German prefers 'Jungs' in plural, then use 'Beamter' instead.)

**Henrik

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