Plural problem in Serbian

Mon Apr 22 19:17:50 UTC 1996

>In Serbian there are two ways of making plural for some >neuter gender
>nouns, those designating animal offspring. Thus, there is:
>
>a)  pile (sg.) "a chicken"--pilic'i (pl.) "chicken"
>b)  pile (sg.)--pilad (pl.) "chicken"
>
>Other examples are: mache--machic'i (machad) "kittens"
>prase--prasic'i (prasad) "piglets"
>kuche--kuchic'i (kuchad) "puppies"
>pache--pachic'i (pachad) "ducklings"
>tele-- telic'i  (telad)  "calves"
>There are probably several more, but very few, because this rule for
>creating plural operates only for a very limited number of neuter
>gender nouns designating animal offspring.  The other form, with
>suffix -ad, also represents the so-called collective nouns.

This has to be stated more clearly.

First, contemporary standard Serbo-Croatian, synchronic
description.

What you are talking  about are the nouns belonging to the
second declension type ("druga vrsta"), or a-type ending in
-e, and having different number of syllables in nominative
and genitive singular ("a-vrsta na -e, nejednakosloz"ne").

You are furthermore interested in the nouns having
-et- as the stem enlargement (this causes nominative and
genitive singular to be different) - this will be important
later on in the diachronic description.

Finally, you are interested in suppletive plural forms.
Some of the nouns belonging to this declension type have
regular plural (N.Sg. kube, G.Sg. kubeta, N.Pl kubeta),
but there are also those which:

a. have both regular and suppletive plural forms
b. have only suppletive plural form (one or more of them)

In the group a. there are primarily objects, such as:

Sg.                   N.Pl

N          G          regular       suppletive

bure       bureta     bureta        burad
dugme      dugmeta    dugmeta       dugmad
uz"e       uz"eta     uz"eta        uz"ad

In this group suppletive plural is noun of the fourth or
i-type in singular, derived from the nominative stem
using suffix -a[-]d. These nouns are collective. For the
things to be more complicated, this fourth declension type
noun itself has plural, so we also have:

buradi, dugmadi, uz"adi

There are also nouns ending in -ce, like zvonce, dance, etc.,
where regular plural form is build from the shorter stem. I,
as a native speaker of S-Cr, am not sure, if they can form
suppletive plural in -ad. At least a small question mark would
be there, as far as I am concerned.

In the group b. there are young HUMAN and animal beings

   Sg.              N.Pl

   N                sup1       sup2        sup3      sup4
A  tele             telad      telic'i     teoci     telci
N  june             junad      ?junic'i    junci
I  ja(g)nje         ja(g)njad  ja(g)njic'i jaganjci  janjci
M  jare             jarad      jaric'i
A  prase            prasad     prasic'i
L  pac"e            pac"ad     pac"ic'i
   gus"c"e          gus"c"ad   gus"c"ic'i
   pile             pilad      pilic'i
   z"dr(ij)ebe      z"drebad               z"dr(ij)epci
   ...
H  unuc"e           unuc"ad    unuc"ic'i
U  siroc"e          siroc"ad   siroc"ic'i
M  Turc"e           Turad      Turc"ic'i
A  Ciganc"e         Ciganc"ad  Ciganc"ic'i
   kumc"e           kumc"ad    kumc"ic'i
   momc"e           momc"ad    momc"ic'i
   d(ij)ete         d(j)eca

Now, suppletive forms are either -ad noun in singular (fourth
declension type) derived from the shorter stem of the noun in
singular, or plural form of some other noun (this other noun is,
as a rule, rarely used in singular). So we have

                           Sg.    Pl.          Sg.     Pl.
tel-e     => tel-ad-0  or  telic' telic'i  or  telac   telci/teoci
tel-et-a

dijete,djeteta is an exception here.

Two things are worth mentioning here. First, there is very interesting
theoretical question in morphology to prove that exactly that form
is suppletive plural. For example, how can we know that telci/teoci
is, beside being plural of telac, also suppletive plural of tele.
BTW I did not find this information about the possibility telci/teoci
in recent S-Cr grammars (like Baric' et al. 1995 or Stanojc"ic' and
Popovic' 1992), but it was present in Franc"ic'1963. Secondly,
there is the room for socio-/psycholinguistic research concerning
which human beings can have -a[-]d plural form. The examples would hint
that there might be some correlation between racial/ethnic prejudice
and this forms, but a solid research is necessary even to formulate
this hypothesis. One should ask native speakers about acceptability
of the forms for different ethnic and racial groups. But this concerns
the existence of such noun and not its plural form, and I did not
stated any hypothesis :)))

Now, your questions

> 1) Could anyone tell me what is the precise difference between these
> two forms of plural (difference in meaning and usage)?

My hint is that:

a. -a[-]d form is more common,
b. -a[-]d form is preferred when you refer to the group as whole,
   and other forms are used when the group is perceived as an
   aggregation of separate elements
c. the forms of the type teoci is getting archaic

My claim a. is also supported by Stieber 1979:128-9

"Moz.na tez. pl. od typu tele formowac' z przyrostkiem -ic'
(telic'i, unuc"ic'i) albo -ac||-c- (teoci, jaganjci), typy te
nie sa, jednak tak sparadygmatyzowane jak typ telad, unuc"ad"

Parallels for the claim be can be found in suppletive plural
of the first declination:

list - lis"c'e|listovi, for example:

Kupio je list po list, dok nije pokupio sve listove sa travnjaka.
U jednom mahu je ubacio svo nakupljeno lis"c'e u kamion.

The same thing here:

Svaki mi se od ovih kuc"ic'a svid'a.
Sva kuc"ad su u stanu.

But this are rather soft rules. I would say that in some context
one possibility would be preferred to the other but not eliminate it.
It is quite logical that when collective noun is used, you refer to
the group as a whole.

But to establish any kind of rules for this, a research with native
speakers as subjects has to be conducted.

> 2) Is one of the forms older than the other?
> 3) Is there a similar example of plural form ending with -ad in any
> other Slavic language?

Now, diachronic and comparative perspective. As far as I can infer from
Nahtigal 1952:195, the -ad and -(a)c forms are older than the -ic'form,
and in this stem suppletive -ad plural is typical for S-Cr:

"...pri osnovah na -e,t- pa sta rus"c"ina in srbohrvas"c"ina opustili
[mnoz"ino - D.S".] - rus"c"ina, z izjemo ditja, ednino, ki jo je
nadomestila tvorba z -e"nok-, a srbohrvas"c"ina v starih tvorbah mnoz"ino,
ki se izraz"a navadno s skupnim, kolektivnim imenom ali tudi z mnoz"ino
druge besedne tvorbe, kar je oboje v posameznih primerih z"e star pojav,
kakor z"e jsla. d[jat]t6ca proti sevsla. d[jat]ti kot izraz mnoz"ine
k d[jat]te,: sle. ime,, te,le,, gen. ime,na, tele,ta, plur. ime,na, tele,ta
shrv. ime, tele, gen. imena, teleta, plur. imena, toda telad ali teoci
(prim. stcksl. tel6c6)"
--------------
Baric', E et al. Hrvatska gramatika, S"K, Zagreb, 1995
Franc"ic', V Gramatyka opisowa je,zyka serbochorwackiego, PWN, W-wa, 1963
Nahtigal, R Slovanski jeziki, DZS, Ljubljana, 1952
Stanojc"ic' Z" & L. Popovic" Gramatika srpskog jezika, Zavod za udz"benike,
   Beograd, 1992
Stieber, Z Zarys gramatyki poro/wnawczej je,zyko/w sl/owian/skich, PWN,
W-wa, 1979

Sincerely

Danko S"ipka

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Dr. Danko Sipka
Slavic Department, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan
Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw
Translation Experts Ltd, Polish Division, Poznan
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