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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN lang=EN-GB>Oscar Wilde once put it very
felicitously: "</SPAN><SPAN lang=EN-GB
style="mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'">I asked the question for the best
reason possible, for the only reason, indeed, that excuses one for asking any
question</SPAN><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US">
–</SPAN><SPAN lang=EN-GB style="mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'">-simple
curiosity." <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns =
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p></SPAN>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN lang=EN-GB
style="mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'">I guess curiosity is always simple
and never idle. It is _lack of curiosity_ that is idle.</SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN lang=EN-US style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">Turning now
from philosophy to linguistics :-), I think that the key word in Gilbert's
original question, despite the emphasis on 'nouns', (</SPAN><SPAN
lang=EN-GB>Does anyone know of any language where the singular and plural of a
significant number of NOUNS are formed from historically unrelated
stems?</SPAN><SPAN lang=EN-US style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">) was the word
'significant'. What makes me think so is the fact that suppletion is a rather
common phenomenon cross-linguistically and it should not be a problem to find a
great deal of languages with quite a few examples.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">I am not sure what Gilbert meant by
"significant number", so I will interpret it my own way: "strikingly/unusually
many". <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">I believe one is unlikely to find a language
with, say, some 200 or more suppletive plural stems. Seems to me it would be
uneconomic for the speakers of the language to afford such a luxury merely for
grammatical purposes. We do know of numerous cases of people actually speaking
or understanding two or even more "parallel" languages. I am not talking of
multilingualism. I mean, for example, the honorific terms that are so common in
Japanese, Austronesian, and others. (I found one example from Samoan. The
equivalents for 'speak' in it are: tautala (polite), felalai (orator), fofonga
(chief), malele (high-rank chief). <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">Other instances are male vs. female parlance
(not uncommon in Amerindian) or secret languages (in Africa) or avoidance styles
(in Australia). They may seem to be "uneconomic" for the speakers, but they
fulfill a social function. In other words it makes sense and is worth while to
invent/develop/ and learn new unrelated words in order to </SPAN><SPAN
lang=EN-GB>emphasise</SPAN><SPAN lang=EN-US style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">
that you're a male/female or in order to show due respect to the chief, etc. And
it does not seem to be worth any efforts to develop and learn new words for the
sole purpose of marking plurality (purely grammatical function with no social
implications).<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><SPAN lang=EN-US>Most Russian
examples mentioned earlier are just cases of one form falling into misuse and
some other filling the gap. That's a pretty normal way of developing suppletion,
of course, but where NOUNs are concerned, Russian, I am sorry to say, does not
have that much suppletion and we do retain most of the "lost" forms in
non-neutral styles. We have sg. reb'onok – pl. reb'ata and we have sg.
dit'a/dit'o – pl. deti. Both couples can be used for "child(ren)/kid(s)/etc."
But it just happened so that the NEUTRAL pair would be sg. reb'onok<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>– pl. deti. Reb'ata being reserved
mostly for "guys (with or without girls)". Dit'a sounds too literary, lofty and
old-fashioned, while dit'o sounds too informal and even uneducated (and may in
fact be a relatively recent back‑formation from deti). But all the forms are
still in use and are perfectly well understandable.</SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN lang=EN-US>As for chelovek – l'udi (which seems, by the
way, to be related to the German Leute), and other cases of suppletion,
like</SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN lang=EN-US style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">idu –
shol<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><SPAN
style="mso-tab-count: 1"> </SPAN><SPAN
style="mso-tab-count: 1">
</SPAN>go – went <SPAN
style="mso-tab-count: 1"> </SPAN>vado
– andavo (Italian.Very much the same inFrench, + fut.
'ira')<BR></SPAN><SPAN lang=EN-US style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">xoroshiy –
luchshe <SPAN
style="mso-tab-count: 1"> </SPAN>good –
better<SPAN style="mso-tab-count: 1">
</SPAN>buono – meglio <BR></SPAN><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">ploxoy – xuzhe<SPAN
style="mso-tab-count: 1"> </SPAN>bad
– worse<SPAN
style="mso-tab-count: 1"> </SPAN>male
-<SPAN style="mso-tab-count: 1"> </SPAN>peggiore <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText><SPAN lang=EN-US>and others, it looks to me very much like
an areal feature diffused at some time among (Indo)European languages. That is
why I think one shouldn’t expect to find some strikingly deviating cases in the
said languages. </SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">Better candidates would be Amerindian,
Australian, Caucasian, Papuan languages. Caucasian languages are ever so
"bizarre" in many respects. Some of them have, for example, temporals<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>like 'in three/four/five (!) days' that
are not derived from respective numerals. And there are of course lots of
instances of suppletion. Given that many common words in Australian languages
were used as names and got tabooed after the person died (and often in such
cases equivalents from </SPAN><SPAN lang=EN-GB>neighbouring</SPAN><SPAN
lang=EN-US style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"> languages were taken) suppletion
may be widespread in Australian languages. I skimmed through "The Languages of
Australia" (Dixon) but didn’t find anything to that effect, though. I just
didn’t have much time for that.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">Suppletion is rather common in Papuan
languages. One example is Yimas (William Foley, The Yimas Language of New
Guinea, Stanford UP, 1991: p.120ff):<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"> <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">kalakn – kumpwi <SPAN
style="mso-tab-count: 1">
</SPAN><SPAN
style="mso-tab-count: 1">
</SPAN><SPAN
style="mso-tab-count: 1">
</SPAN>'son, child, boy'<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">away – ngawanyct<SPAN
style="mso-tab-count: 1"> </SPAN><SPAN
style="mso-tab-count: 1">
</SPAN><SPAN
style="mso-tab-count: 1">
</SPAN>'mother's brother'<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">narmang – ngaykum<SPAN
style="mso-tab-count: 1">
</SPAN><SPAN
style="mso-tab-count: 1">
</SPAN><SPAN
style="mso-tab-count: 1">
</SPAN>'woman, wife'<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">kaywi – ngaykumpn kumpwi<SPAN
style="mso-tab-count: 1">
</SPAN><SPAN
style="mso-tab-count: 1">
</SPAN>'daughter, girl'<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN lang=EN-US style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">tnum – tpwi
(suppletive?)<SPAN style="mso-tab-count: 1"> </SPAN><SPAN
style="mso-tab-count: 1">
</SPAN>'canonical sago palm'<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"> <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN lang=EN-US style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">But there
are, of course, better experts in Papuan languages on this list who might say
more.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN lang=EN-GB>>Russian has a real suppletive example:
_celovek_ "person, human<BR>>being" (_c_ is like unaspirated English _ch_)
vs. _ljudi_ "people"<BR>>(_j_ is palatal glide). The respective unsuppletive
complementary<BR>>forms do not exist in the modern language, as far as I know
not even<BR>>as archaisms.</SPAN><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText><SPAN lang=EN-US>It is not quite so. There is the singular
form l'ud 'people, rabble, mob' (with the connotation of
uneducated/lower-class/common people). It is a common word. Everybody will
understand it. The plural of chelovek also exists absolutely legally – only in
"oblique" cases, i.e. all cases except for the nominative: shesti chelovek – of
six people, shesti chelovekam – to six people, shestyu chelovekami – with/by 6
persons, etc (I am sorry to wage on this discussion here, after all it's not a
Slavonic list. I just mean to say that Russian is a bad candidature for a
"suppletive language", not better than many other European languages, at
least).<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Moreover, even the
nominative plural exists (being of course a recent coinage). It's quite normal
to hear the following phrase anywhere (except in formal speech): Vse my l'udi,
vse my cheloveki – All we (are) humans.</SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText><SPAN lang=EN-US>The situation with suppletive leta –
"years" is not so simple either. First, it is not conditioned by combination
with numerals. The lexeme sg. god – pl. gody simply has a defective paradigm in
that the plural genitive is missing. Mnogie gody (nom./accusative) – mnogix let
(genitive). In formal style only this would be possible. But, secondly, it is
quite possible to say mnogix godov informally. That would sound like a
countryside way of speaking, but it still is fairly common. </SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText><SPAN lang=EN-US>The numerals ending in 2, 3, and 4 (2, 3,
4, 22, 23, 104, etc) take singular genitive nouns and the numerals ending in 5-0
take plural genitive nouns. Since the plural genitive for god "year" is
suppletive, naturally those numerals combine with the suppletive form. Other
instances of pl. gen. would be suppletive too: moix let – of-my of-years.
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