<div dir="ltr">Thanks, Östen. We did consider an associative use of 'and' but unfortunately Limba doesn't have such a usage today, I did mention Denis' idea that the plural suffix comes from an associative marker *aN in the Nyun languages, which we considered. You made me realize that I forgot to mention in my posting that the plural suffix /-ín/ cannot be added to proper nouns, where an associative plural would be most expected. Here's footnote 31 in the paper Daniel Kamara and I just wrote up:<div><div><br><div><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Creissels
(2014: 8) gives the Nyun Guñaamolo example Asan-aŋ ‘Assane and other people
associated with him’. Limba, however, does not have such an associative marker,
and it is in fact not possible to add /-in/ to a proper noun. Thus, Kamára
cannot become *Kamárɛ̂ŋ (or anything else involving /-ín/). To express
something like <span style="color:black">‘Kamara and those
associated with him</span>’ one has to revert to the clan name, in this case <i>bi-yenke beŋ</i> ‘the Kamaras’. Similarly,
‘Bangura and those associated with him’ would be expressed as <i>bi-moyni beŋ</i> ‘the Banguras’.</span></div></div></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sun, Mar 8, 2026 at 11:05 PM Östen Dahl <<a href="mailto:oesten@ling.su.se">oesten@ling.su.se</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div class="msg3024951931064425771">
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="SV" style="font-size:11pt">Hi Larry and everyone,<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="SV" style="font-size:11pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:11pt">It seems to me that the obvious link would be associative plurals. According to Daniel & Moravcsik (2013) , Basque forms an associative plural with the conjunction
<i>ta</i> ‘and’;<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:11pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt">¿Nor bizi da ets̃eortan? - ¿Or? PeiĨo ta</span><span lang="ES-BO" style="font-size:11pt">.</span><span lang="ES-BO" style="font-size:11pt">
</span><span style="font-size:11pt"><u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt">‘¿quién vive en esa casa?’ - ‘¿Ahí?Pedro y</span><span style="font-size:11pt">
</span><span style="font-size:11pt">compañía.’<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt">‘Who lives in this house? – Here? Pedro and</span><span style="font-size:11pt">
</span><span style="font-size:11pt">others.’<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:11pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:11pt">I have not been able to find more information on this short notice, but someone who knows more about these things than I do may be able to add more details to the picture.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:11pt">Best,<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:11pt">Östen<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:11pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:11pt">Reference<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt">Michael Daniel, Edith Moravcsik. 2013. The Associative Plural.<br>
In: Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.)<br>
WALS Online (v2020.4) [Data set]. Zenodo.<br>
<a href="https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13950591" target="_blank">https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13950591</a><br>
(Available online at <a href="http://wals.info/chapter/36" target="_blank">http://wals.info/chapter/36</a>, Accessed on 2026-03-09.)</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:11pt"><u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:11pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span lang="SV" style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Från:</span></b><span lang="SV" style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"> Lingtyp <<a href="mailto:lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank">lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>>
<b>För </b>David Gil via Lingtyp<br>
<b>Skickat:</b> den 9 mars 2026 05:23<br>
<b>Till:</b> Larry M Hyman <<a href="mailto:hyman@berkeley.edu" target="_blank">hyman@berkeley.edu</a>><br>
<b>Kopia:</b> <a href="mailto:LINGTYP@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG" target="_blank">LINGTYP@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG</a><br>
<b>Ämne:</b> Re: [Lingtyp] Development of a noun plural affix from *and, *with?<u></u><u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Hi Larry, everyone,<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Not exactly what you're looking for, but a clearly related phenomenon, is the coexpression of 'and' not with plurality (as per your query) but rather with the semantically related notion of universal quantification ('all', 'every'). The
latter pattern of coexpression is quite common cross-linguistically, and even features in a WALS map "Conjunctions and Universal Quantifiers" (<a href="https://wals.info/chapter/56" target="_blank">https://wals.info/chapter/56</a>).<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">David<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">On Mon, Mar 9, 2026 at 11:08<span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span>AM Larry M Hyman via Lingtyp <<a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>> wrote:<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Hello everyone,<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> <u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">I have been puzzling over the historical source of a noun plural suffix /-in/ [iŋ] which was innovated in Limba, a Niger-Congo isolate spoken in Sierra Leone. While Cobbinah & Lüpke (2014)
and Voisin (2015) consider verbal and pronominal sources of an uncannily similar nasal plural suffix in the distantly related Nyun subgroup of Atlantic languages of Senegal, and Creissels (2014: 7-8, 2015: 42; 2024: 479) relates it to an Atlantic associative
marker ('X and people associated with X') reconstructed as <i>*aN</i> (Pozdniakov 2015), which Limba does not have, Limba has a homophonous preposition /ín/ ‘with, and’ which has the same tone and the same allomorphs
<i>iŋ </i>and <i>ni</i>.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> ba-mán-<b>íŋ</b> beŋ 'the visitors' (singular: bà-màŋ 'visitor')</span><u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">bà-máŋ <b>íŋ
</b>bá-dàŋ 'a visitor and a hunter'<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> <u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">My question: Is a pathway of *and, *with > plural marker natural (as it seems to me)? Are there known cases where this has happened?<u></u><u></u></span></p>
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Thanks very much.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> <u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Larry<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> <u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">PS In case anyone would like to know more, Daniel Kamara and I have just completed a paper "Noun class and plural marking in Limba (Thɔnkɔ dialect)" which I can send upon request.</span><u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">References<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Cobbinah, Alexander Y. & Friederieke Lüpke. 2014. When number meets classification. The linguistic expression of number in Baïnounk
languages. In Anne Storch & Gerrit J. Dimmendaal (eds), <i>Number — Constructions and semantics. Case studies from Africa, Amazonia, India and Oceania</i>, 199-220. John Benjamins Publishing Company.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> <u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Creissels, Denis. 2014. Atlantic noun class systems: A typological approach. In, Aicha Belkadi, Kakia Chatsiou and Kirsty Rowan (eds.).
<i>Proceedings of Conference on Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory 4</i>, 12pp. London: SOAS.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> <u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Creissels, Denis. 2015. Typologie des classes nominales dans les langues atlantiques.
</span><span lang="DE" style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">In Denis Creissels & Konstantin Pozdniakov (eds),
<i>Les classes nominales dans les langues atlantiques</i>, 7-55. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.</span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> <u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Creissels, Denis. 2024. Noun inflections and gender in Atlantic languages. In In Friederike Lüpke (ed.),
<i>the Oxford guide to Atlantic languages of West Africa</i>, 462-482. Oxford Scholarship Online.
<a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/59850/chapter/511380651" target="_blank"><span style="color:rgb(70,120,134)">https://academic.oup.com/book/59850/chapter/511380651</span></a><u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> <u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Hyman, Larry M. & Daniel Ibrahim Kamara. 2026. Noun class and plural marking in Limba. Ms. University of California, Berkeley.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> <u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Pozdniakov, Konstantin. 2015. Diachronie des classes nominales atlantiques: morphophonologie, morphologie, sémantique.
</span><span lang="DE" style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">In Denis Creissels & Konstantin Pozdniakov (eds),
<i>Les classes nominales dans les langues atlantiques</i>, 57-102. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.</span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> <u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Voisin, Sylvie. 2015. Sur l’origine du suffixe du pluriel dans le groupe Nyun-Buy.
<i>Linguistique et Langues Africaines</i> 1.13-41.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="m_3024951931064425771gmailsignatureprefix">-- </span><u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Larry M. Hyman, Distinguished Professor of the Graduate School<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">& Director, France-Berkeley Fund, University of California, Berkeley<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~hyman" target="_blank"><span style="color:rgb(17,85,204)">https://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~hyman</span></a><u></u><u></u></p>
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<span class="m_3024951931064425771gmailsignatureprefix">-- </span><u></u><u></u></p>
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<pre>David Gil<u></u><u></u></pre>
<pre><u></u> <u></u></pre>
<pre>Senior Scientist (Associate)<u></u><u></u></pre>
<pre>Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution<u></u><u></u></pre>
<pre>Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology<u></u><u></u></pre>
<pre>Deutscher Platz 6, Leipzig, 04103, Germany<u></u><u></u></pre>
<pre><u></u> <u></u></pre>
<pre>Email: <a href="mailto:dapiiiiit@gmail.com" target="_blank">dapiiiiit@gmail.com</a><u></u><u></u></pre>
<pre>Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-526117713<u></u><u></u></pre>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
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</div></blockquote></div><div><br clear="all"></div><div><br></div><span class="gmail_signature_prefix">-- </span><br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div>Larry M. Hyman, Distinguished Professor of the Graduate School</div><div>& Director, France-Berkeley Fund, University of California, Berkeley</div><div><a href="https://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~hyman" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">https://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~hyman</a><br></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>