Associative plurals

Tue Apr 5 09:17:49 UTC 2011

Sans oublier en haoussa le pronom 3PL 'su' utilisé comme pré-déterminant
devant un nom propre e.g. 'su Musa', signifiant 'Musa et al'

Bernard CARON

#13, Nagwamase Crst 
A.B.U. Zaria
NIGERIA 
(++234 802 60 80 553)
12, Villa d'Amont
94800 Villejuif
FRANCE 
(++336 65 55 94 25)

-----Message d'origine-----
De : funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu
[mailto:funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu] De la part de Stéphane Robert
Envoyé : mardi 5 avril 2011 06:51
À : funknet
Objet : Re: [FUNKNET] Associative plurals

In French too, some people use the plural 
definite article with a masculine (probably as an 
heritage of the Napoleonian code!) proper name to 
refer to a man and his family like in:
"Les Jean(s ?) viennent ce soir"
meaning "Jean, his wife and kids".

I don't use this construction but I have heard it 
from people originating form Western part of 
France (Charentes-Poitou); I don't know if it is 
regionally or socially connotated but for me it 
has a vague popular connotation. It seems to be 
more commonly used inside a family where the 
reference to the person ("Jean") is obvious.

Stéphane Robert

Le 06:01 05/04/2011,Yokoyama, Olga écrit:
>In Japanese, you can add them to kinship terms 
>as well (o-kaa-san-tachi 'mother et al'). In the 
>19th century Russian peasant letters (by 
>speakers of North Russian dialect)) I have found 
>a similar phenomenon with a subject personal 
>name in sg but with pl verb agreement (e.g. John 
>were, meaning 'John and wife were').
>
>
>
>Olga T. Yokoyama
>
>Professor
>
>Department of Applied Linguistics
>
>University of California, Los Angeles
>
>Tel. (310) 825-7694
>
>Fax (310) 206-4118
>
>http://www.appling.ucla.edu
>
>
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu 
>[mailto:funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu] On Behalf Of Marianne Mithun
>Sent: Monday, April 04, 2011 8:24 PM
>To: funknet
>Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] Associative plurals
>
>
>
>There is an article on this:
>
>
>
>Corbett, Grevill and Marianne Mithun. 1996. Associative forms in a typology
>
>of number systems: evidence from Yup'ik. Journal of Linguistics 32: 1-17.
>
>
>
>Central Alaska Yup'ik Eskimo, and Central Pomo, among many other languages
>
>have these. You can add them to proper names.
>
>
>
>Marianne Mithun
>
>
>
>--On Monday, April 04, 2011 9:59 PM -0500 David Tuggy <david_tuggy at sil.org>
>
>wrote:
>
>
>
> > Hello, all,
>
> >
>
> > I'm interested in a phenomenon that I understand some to have called
>
> > "associative plurality", in which a plural does not designate a group of
>
> > items all properly designated by the pluralized nominal entity but
rather
>
> > a group of items associated with such a nominal entity. It shows up
>
> > dramatically in pluralized personal names, where something like _the
>
> > Alices_ will mean not 'the group of people each called "Alice"' but
>
> > rather 'Alice and those associated with her (i.e. her
>
> > bunch/family/team/crew/party/etc.)' In Orizaba Nawatl (nlv), for
instance,
>
> >
>
> > New?itzeh n ichpopochtih koxamo tlahtlaniskeh inka n Samueltih.
>
> > yonder.they.come the girl.pl whether they.will.ask with.them the
Samuel.pl
>
> >
>
> > Those girls that are coming over there are probably going to ask after
>
> > Samuel and his friends.
>
> >
>
> > Here girl.pl is a normal plural, meaning 'group of people each of which
>
> > is a girl', but Samuel.pl is associative. Note too the plurality of the
>
> > 'agreement-marker' postpositional object in the word 'with.them':
>
> > sometimes that kind of thing is the only marker for an associative
plural
>
> > in Orizaba: _Samuel inkal_ (Samuel their.house) means 'the house of
>
> > Samuel's family/group'.
>
> >
>
> > My two main questions:
>
> >
>
> > (1) How widespread a phenomenon is this? What languages allow an
>
> > associative plural for proper names? (Are there any varieties of
>
> > English/Spanish/etc. that allow it?) Do they also allow a
standard-plural
>
> > interpretation?
>
> > (2) What other kinds of nominal entities show something similar? E.g. in
>
> > my English _dishes_ often means 'dishes [= plates] and other such
things,
>
> > e.g. silverware, glasses, pots & pans'; does that count? Does any
>
> > language allow associative plurals for just any noun? What about 1st and
>
> > 2nd person plural pronouns, where perhaps only one person is speaker or
>
> > addressee, but another group is associated with that person to make the
>
> > plurality. Does any language *not* allow an associative plural meaning
>
> > for them? Does any language distinguish a 'multiple speaker' 1pl pronoun
>
> > from an associative one?
>
> >
>
> > Pointers to any good discussions of this in the literature would be
>
> > appreciated as well.
>
> >
>
> > ?David Tuggy
>
> >
>
> >
>
> >
>
> >
>
> >
>
> >
>
> >
>
> >
>
> >

__________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature
database 6016 (20110405) __________

The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus.

http://www.eset.com

__________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature
database 6016 (20110405) __________

The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus.

http://www.eset.com

__________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature
database 6016 (20110405) __________

The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus.

http://www.eset.com