[Lexicog] lexical entries as singulars or plurals

[Paula Jones]

Dear Wayne, 

When we started entering the inanimate nouns which are used more in their plural or nonspecific form (fruits, tubers, leaves, grass, inanimate objects like arrows, or generally things which occur in groups and can be counted, body parts that are seen as a pair) as the head word in the dictionary back before 1990, the Eduria & Barasana (Eastern Tucanoan, Colombia, South America) were very positive toward it and most of that large group of nouns remain in that form with the singular given as a grammar note. The plural is also given since a certain percentage have a regular plural form for when they are counted, but not all and not all use the regular plural suffix. On the other hand, some of the original classification of this group of nouns, like 'canoes' and 'benches', have been changed to their singular form by the speakers since 1990, probably because, though they have all the forms of the classification, these days the usage of the singular is more common, i.e., the people group is much smaller than it used to be and no longer travel in groups of more than one canoe at a time as has been described as happening hundreds of years ago. In my mind, we organized them all by form originally but in the years since then, have changed to the singular when the people objected and continued to prefer the singular head word over time. 

This was also done for the animate group words (bees, birds, fish, people groups, etc.), which add a singular morpheme when refering to just one. This group is much more unpredictable, i.e. a higher percentage of  these words which possess the added singular suffix are preferred as the head word by the people. An example are ants that have a very painful bite, the singular is more often used, as compared to ants which are gathered to eat, where the plural, nonspecific form is prefered as the head word. The same for fish, possibly because of the different fishing methods for the different species. 

All other nouns, except for mass nouns, occur in their singular forms. This treatment of the group, collective, nonspecific, etc. nouns for the Eduria & Barasana dictionary is now one that has been developed from their view of word usage and as such seems inconsistent and questionable at times. We plan to give the dictionary to the people next year as they have developed it. BUT I have the question - - - if we were to find the time and energy to work on it for Internet availability, how would linguists want this group of nouns, inanimate and animate, handled?

Thank you very much, Paula S. Jones

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Wayne Leman" <wayne_leman at sil.org>
To: <lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, August 17, 2005 8:45 PM
Subject: [Lexicog] lexical entries as singulars or plurals


> I, as I suspect most who do lexical research, have been entering nouns into 
> my database with the singular as the usual default entry. But I've been 
> doing some thinking that for Cheyenne, at least, there are some nouns for 
> which the singular is so rare as to be almost non-existent. Instead, the 
> plural is the usual form. Among such would be, e.g.
> 
> mo'e'estse 'grass/weeds' (it's plural, whereas English considers grass a 
> mass noun)
> moneshkeho 'beans'
> mahaemenotse 'kernel corn'
> 
> It is possible to elicit a singular, at least with some speakers, but the 
> plural  is, by far, the most commonly used form.
> 
> Then there are other forms for which both the singular and plural are 
> commonly used, but the plural may have a cultural significance greater than 
> that of simply being "the plural of the singular." For example, for 
> Cheyenne, there is
> 
> ma'heono 'sacred powers' (these are prayed to in traditional prayers, even 
> in post-missionary times)
> ma'heo'o 'God'
> 
> What I'd like to suggest is that for the lexicons of some languages, at 
> least, it may be necessary to enter the singular and plural forms of nouns 
> (and, for some languages, perhaps verbs) where there is some cultural 
> significance to having both. Obviously, the database would still indicate 
> derivational links among the singular and plural entries.
> 
> What do you think?
> 
> Wayne
> -----
> Wayne Leman
> Cheyenne website: http://www.geocities.com/cheyenne_language 
> 
> 
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> 
> 
> Yahoo! Groups Links
> 
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>
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