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<font size="+1"><font face="Book Antiqua">Dear Kazuto,<br>
<br>
You can find a typological discussion of <i>pluralia tantum</i> in
Greville Corbett's book on <i>Number</i>, especially section §5.8
[pp.171-177]. Greville cites cases in Yup'ik, Tsez, Archi, Lezgian,
among others.<br>
</font></font>
<ul>
<li><font size="+1"><font face="Book Antiqua">Corbett, Greville.
2000. <i>Number</i>. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.</font></font></li>
</ul>
<font size="+1"><font face="Book Antiqua">best,<br>
Alex.<br>
</font></font>
<hr size="2" width="100%"><font size="+1"><font face="Book Antiqua"><br>
</font></font><br>
Kazuto Matsumura a écrit :
<blockquote
cite="mid:20091221111414.8531ABD8.kazuto.matsumura@nifty.com"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Dear Siva and all,
As this is a typology list, it would be very nice for
the coming summary of this dicsussion to include a
report on how common the phenomenon of pluralia tantum
itself is outside the Indo-European family of languages.
I am very curious, because the English-language Winkipedia
article on plurale tantum, for example, gives examples
taken from a few Indo-European languages only.
Incidentally, the "trousers" words in both Finnish and
Estonian are probably plurale tantum, but they are
languages spoken in areas adjacent to the SAE region
and have been strongly influenced by Swedish and German,
respectively, for centuries.
In case this is a topic that has already been discussed
here or studied somewhere, I apologize for my intrusion,
but ask you to kindly lead me to the relevant literature.
Thank you.
Kazuto Matsumura
Univ. of Tokyo
Siva Kalyan <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:sivakalyan.princeton@GMAIL.COM"><sivakalyan.princeton@GMAIL.COM></a> wrote:
(2009/12/21 04:47)
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Hi,
Suppose I had one pair of trousers with a hole in it. I would exclaim, "My
trousers have a hole in them!". Now suppose I had the misfortune to discover
that this was true of *all* of my pairs of trousers. Then I would say, "All
my trousers have a hole in them!". Note that in the first case,
*trousers*refers to a single pair of trousers, whereas in the second,
it refers to
multiple pairs.
What I'm curious about is: How common is this in the world's languages? That
is, how common is it for a language to zero-code the plural of a plurale
tantum (a noun denoting a singular entity but which is grammatically
plural)? Is there any other strategy that is used used in such situations?
(The earlier thread on double plurals comes to mind.)
Also, why would a language zero-code this kind of plural in the first place?
Might it have to do with the "repeated morph constraint" (Menn and
MacWhinney 1984) or "product-oriented schemas" (Bybee 2001)?
Thanks,
Siva
Ref's
Bybee, Joan. Phonology and Language Use. Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Menn, L, and B MacWhinney. "The Repeated Morph Constraint: Toward An
Explanation." Language 60, no. 3 (1984): 519-541.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
--
Kazuto Matsumura
kazuto.matsumura(a)nifty.com
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.kmatsum.info/">http://www.kmatsum.info/</a>
</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Dr Alex FRANÇOIS
LACITO - CNRS, France
2009-2011: Visiting Fellow
Dpt of Linguistics
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
Australian National University
ACT 0200, Australia
Home address:
31 Ainsworth St, Mawson, ACT 2607, Australia
ph: [h] (+61)-2-6166 5569
[w] (+61)-2-6125 1664
[mob] (+61)-4-50 960 042
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://alex.francois.free.fr">http://alex.francois.free.fr</a>
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