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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="">Dear colleagues<br>
<br>
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="">There is a absolute classic
for pluralia tantum, if it was written in English, everybody would know
it: <span style=""> </span></span><span lang="EN-US">Zaliznjak (1967).
(But
books not written in English cannot be classic literature by
definition.) <br>
<br>
Zaliznjak argues that pluralia tantum are a syntactic class (actually
one of
seven genders in Russian), because there is no contexts where pluralia
tantum
ever have agreement with a singular, not even in distributive contexts,
such as
(1):<br>
<br>
(1) Russian (Zaliznjak 1967: 76)<br>
Vot<span style=""> </span>odni<span style=""> </span>iz<span
style=""> </span>ètix<span style=""> </span>sanej<span
style=""> </span><br>
behold<span style=""> </span>one:<span
style="font-variant: small-caps;">pl</span><span style=""> </span>from<span
style=""> </span>this:<span style="font-variant: small-caps;">pl</span>:<span
style="font-variant: small-caps;">gen</span><span style=""> </span>sledge:<span
style="font-variant: small-caps;">pl:gen</span><br>
‘Look here is one of these sledges.’<br>
<br>
Accordingly, pluralia tantum are not defined as nouns lacking plurals,
Zaliznjak excludes examples such as rebjata ‘boys, guys, folks’ which
has no
singular, but shows singular agreement in distributive contexts.<br>
<br>
(2) Russian (Zaliznjak 1967: 78)<br>
Vot<span style=""> </span>odin<span style=""> </span>iz<span
style=""> </span>ètix<span style=""> </span>rebjat<span
style=""> </span><br>
behold<span style=""> </span>one:<span
style="font-variant: small-caps;">sg.m</span><span style=""> </span>from<span
style=""> </span>this:<span style="font-variant: small-caps;">pl</span>:<span
style="font-variant: small-caps;">gen</span><span style=""> </span>boy:<span
style="font-variant: small-caps;">pl:gen</span><br>
‘Look here is one of these guys/boys.’<br>
<br>
However, sapogi ‘pair of boots’ is a plurale tantum in its meaning
‘pair of
boots’ even though there is a corresponding singular.<br>
<span style=""> </span>It turns out that there are no
animate pluralia tantum according to this definition in Russian (except
perhaps
the ‘whites’ and ‘blacks’ in chess about which two nouns Zaliznjak has
a brilliant
long note).<br>
<span style=""> </span>In a recent excellent
monograph Acquaviva (2007) denies that pluralia tantum are class of
their own,
taking the traditional morphological definition for granted without
referring
to Zaliznjak. However, Acquaviva uses the same kind of test to describe
lexical
plurals, notably in Italian where there are relics from neuter that
have
feminine in the plural and masculine in the singular, such as uovo
‘egg’
masculine, plural uova ‘eggs’ feminine, but una (feminine) delle uova
‘one of
the eggs’ not *uno delle uova. (This is amply described in the Romanist
literature, so please, apologize that I am to general here.) However,
according
to Zaliznjak’s approach, pluralia tantum can be easily kept distinct
from other
kinds of lexical plurals in that they never have singular agreement,
not even
in distributive contexts. It follows from this approach that there are
also
phrasal pluralia tantum, such as German ‘Olympische Spiele’ Olympic
Games (game
is no plurale tantum, but Olympic Games is). Interestingly, German has
no way
to express distributivity with pluralia tantum:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">*einer von den Ferien/*eine von
den
Ferien/*ein(e)s von den Ferien<br>
*einer von den Olympischen Spielen/*eine
von den Olympischen Spielen/*ein(e)s von den Olympischen Spielen/*ein
von den
Olympischen Spielen<br>
<br>
</span><span style=""><span style=""></span>For
a survey of pluralia tantum in Europe see (</span><span lang="EN-US">Koptjevskaja-Tamm
& Wälchli 2001).</span><span style="" lang="EN-US"> </span><span
style="">Outside Europe, pluralia tantum are common, for
instance, in Burushaski, Zuni, Kiowa (class IVc) (Zuni and Kiowa-Tanoan
are exceptional in this respect for North America), and the paradise
for students
of pluralia tantum would be Africa, if more African languages were
better
described (well-known examples are Bantu languages, such as Swahili,
but there
are many more languages in Africa with many pluralia tantum). Of couse,
as pointed out by Marcel Erdal, dual has to be taken into account, if
there is a dual, as, for instance, in classical Indo-European languages
where there are many pluralia tantum and Semitic languages.<br>
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="">Of particular
interest is Karen Ebert’s grammar of Kera. In Kera collectives are a
gender
along with masculine and feminine. If my interpretation of the lecture
of the
grammar is correct, the large class of collectives could be viewed as a
gender
of pluralia tantum in the sense of Zaliznjak (with the difference that
this is
a major gender in Kera, including many inanimate nouns). Collective
gender
nouns have always plural agreement, even if there is only <br>
<br>
</span><span lang="EN-US">(40) Kera (Ebert 1979, II: 149)<br>
<u>Kámpá</u> <span style=""> </span>yáaká</span><span
style="font-family: "Doulos SIL";" lang="EN-US">ŋ</span><span
lang="EN-US"> <span style=""> </span>kə</span><span
style="font-family: "Doulos SIL";" lang="EN-US">́</span><span
lang="EN-US">na <span style=""> </span>mə</span><span
style="font-family: "Doulos SIL";" lang="EN-US">̀</span><span
lang="EN-US">nà. <span style=""> </span><u>Ye</u>
<span style=""> </span>téw <span style=""> </span>ya</span><span
style="font-family: "Doulos SIL";" lang="EN-US">ŋ</span><span
lang="EN-US"> <span style=""> </span>wə</span><span
style="font-family: "Doulos SIL";" lang="EN-US">́</span><span
lang="EN-US">ra <span style=""> </span>dìbìinìm<br>
leg <span style=""> </span>let:<span
style="font-variant: small-caps;">pst</span> <span style="">
</span>here <span style=""> </span>one. <span style=""> </span><span
style="font-variant: small-caps;">3pl</span> <span style=""> </span>finish
<span style=""> </span><span style="font-variant: small-caps;">fut</span>
<span style=""> </span><span style="font-variant: small-caps;">intens</span>
<span style=""> </span>tomorrow<br>
‘There is only one leg left (to be eaten). It will be finished
tomorrow.’<br style="">
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style="">
<!--[endif]--></span></p>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"
lang="EN-US">Note that these few remarks are not enough to do
justice to Kera, if you are interested in the whole story, go to
Ebert’s book.<br>
</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span
style=""> </span>Generally, pluralia
tantum seem to extend only if a language has a high grammaticalization
of
nominal number. This is because of the animacy hierarchy where
inanimate nouns
come lowest on the hierarchy and because proper pluralia tantum rarely
are
animates (as shown by Zaliznjak for Russian). An exception are a
totally
different kind of pluralia tantum deriving from verbal number, as for
instance,
in Dakota:<br>
<br>
</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"
lang="EN-US">Dakota (Siouan, Boas & Deloria 1939: 66)<br>
“Many nouns are verbal forms with the plural ending -pi: Some of them
have lost
their verbal function and are used as nouns only while others are
rather felt
as verbal forms.”<br>
ti-pi live-<span style="font-variant: small-caps;">pl</span>
‘tent/house’. ‘a</span><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Doulos SIL";" lang="EN-US">ġ</span><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";" lang="EN-US">u´yapi
‘they cause it to be scorched > bread’, wak’a´lyapi ‘something
they make hot > tea, coffee’<br>
<br>
Best wishes<br>
Bernhard Wälchli<br>
</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br>
</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"
lang="EN-US">Selected references<br>
Acquaviva, Paolo. 2008. Lexical Plurals. A morphosemantic approach.
Oxford:
Oxford University Press.<br>
Berger, Hermann. 1974. Das Yasin-Burushaski (Werchikwar). Grammatik,
Texte,
Wörterbuch. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.<br>
Boas, Franz & Deloria, Ella. 1941 / 1976. Dakota Grammar. (Memoires
of the
National Academy of Science 23.) Washington: United States Government
Printing
Office.<br>
Ebert, Karen H. 1979. Sprache und Tradition der Kera (Tschad). III:
Grammatik.
Berlin: Reimer.<br>
Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria & Wälchli, Bernhard. 2001. The
Circum-Baltic
languages. An areal-typological approach. In Dahl, Östen &
Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria (eds.) Circum-Baltic languages 2: Grammar and
Typology,
615-761. Amsterdam: Benjamins. <br>
Lorimer, D.L.R. 1935-1938. The Burushaski language. I. Introduction and
grammar.
III. Vocabularies and index. Oslo: Instituttet for sammenlignende
kulturforskning.<br>
Watkins, Laurel J. 1984. A Grammar of Kiowa. With assistance of Parker
McKenzie. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.<br>
Zaliznjak, Andrej A. 1967. Russkoe imennoe slovoizmenenie. Moskva:
Nauka.</span>
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