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<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Dear Edith,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial> If I may tackle again a topic
which has recently brought about fruitful discussions on this website, let me
mention some facts that might be relevant to the issue:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>1) as is often the case with plurals in dialects, the
Poitou-Charente variety of regional French (in the centre and west of the
country) has a kind of plurality scheme very different from those which are
customary in standard French: one says, in that brand of French, things like
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial><EM>chez tonton Paul sont venus, </EM>literally "at uncle
Paul's (place) have come", meaning "uncle Paul and his family have come to visit
us". <EM>chez tonton Paul </EM>is in fact a relational phrase, since <EM>chez
</EM>is a preposition meaning "at (s.o.)'s place", so that, we get here a very
particular structure, according to which an adverbial complement functions as a
subject, and triggers number (plural) agreement, since <EM>chez + </EM>proper
noun X is interpreted as "X and his family" (the example is in C. Hagège <EM>La
structure des langues, </EM>("Que sais-je series" 2006) Paris, Presses
Universitaires de France, 1995 (4), p. 80).</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>2) in the Zarma dialect of Songhay, the 2PL and 3PL
pronouns, though plural already, can be pluralized, yielding, respectively,
the meanings "you people and others like you" and "these guys and people like
them". As is well-known, this is far from being an isolated fact in African
languages, and elsewhere.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>3) in Slavic languages, certain nouns in the plural have
an associative meaning, which can even become another meaning. Thus, Russian
<EM>koren'</EM> "root" has, besides <EM>koreni </EM>"roots", another
plural <EM>koren'ja </EM>"vegetables". </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>4) Kpelle and Kwakiutl have a kind of associative plural
referring to different types of the object expressed by the singular. You may
consider that this, as well as the case mentioned in 3) above, is not really an
associative plural. If so, it can at least give a clue to a more constrained
definition of what is meant by associative plural.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>5) the Ainu plural suffix -<EM>utar </EM>is used to
express not only the plural, but also the meaning "X and others". The
distinction is indicated by the position of the -<EM>i</EM> suffix
(possessive marker) in the complex word: e.g. <EM>ku-yup-utar-i
</EM>(1SG-elder brother-PL-POSS) "my elder brothers" contrasts with
<EM>ku-yup-i-utar </EM>"my elder brother and others".</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Claude Hagège<BR><A
href="mailto:claude.hagege@free.fr">claude.hagege@free.fr</A></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>