Concerning the plural problem in Serbian

[Robert Beard]

Dear Ms. Krstic',

I also have a story on the collective nouns in South Slavic languages from
my book "Lexeme-Morpheme Base Morphology", SUNY Press, 1995.
 I claim that Number is a binary category with two features [+/-Plural,
+/-Singular].  If this is true, the hypothesis predicts that languages will
have a maximum of 4 Number functions:

[+Plural, -Singular]
[-Plural, +Singular]
[+Plural, +Singular]
[-Plural, -Singular]

I have looked at about 50 languages and those that have Number (Chinese
and Vietnamese do not) seem to have exactly four functions, i. e.

[+Plural, -Singular]            pluralis tantum nouns like s^tani, s^tipci,
                                                  (glasses, oats, pants)
[-Plural, +Singular]            regular Singular nouns which may be
                                                  pluralized:  sto, kuc'a, . . .
[+Plural, +Singular]           collectives (plural reference, singular
                                                   grammar) granje, c'ebad ...
[-Plural, -Singular]            Dual, which Slavic languages used to have
                                                  (Russian berega used to be
Dual)

'Mass' nouns like 'contemplation, air, indoctrination' do not have either
of these features, i. e. it does not make sense to even talk of Number in
relation to these nouns.  Since they have no number, they receive the
default morphology, i.e. that of Singular.

If this story is a workable account, the examples of plural collectives
cited by Mr. Shipka should not have any grammatical status; that is,
they should be rare and idiomatic.  I am unfamiliar with them though
I'm not a native speaker.  Perhaps we could get some idea of what they
represent from other SEELANGers.   My hypothesis of morphological
categories does not allow them (unless they could be interpreted as
nouns whose reference is Number-relevant but neither singular nor plural,
the replacement of Dual as [-Plural, -Singular].

--RBeard



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Robert Beard                              Bucknell University
Russian & Linguistics Programs            Lewisburg, PA 17837
rbeard at bucknell.edu                              717-524-1336
Russian Program   http://www.bucknell.edu/departments/russian
Morphology on Internet        http://www.bucknell.edu/~rbeard
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