associative plurals

[Paolo Ramat]

Geoffrey's example reminds me of the Romance type "Paul et les siens",
"Paolo e i suoi" meaning 'P. and his relatives' or even
"Zidane et les siens", "Z. e i suoi" i.e. "Z. and his team partners".
I wonder whether this is a too far reaching extension of  the original
question concerning <<associative plurals>>...

Paolo Ramat

----- Original Message -----
From: "Geoffrey S. Nathan" <geoffn at SIU.EDU>
To: <LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>
Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2001 16:22
Subject: Re: associative plurals


> At 09:57 AM 8/28/2001 -0400, Paul Hopper wrote:
> >Associative duals and plurals in early Scandinavian:
>
> Paul's examples of Germanic languages reminded me of a colloquial
> associative plural that was in common use in Canadian English when I was
> growing up in the fifties and early sixties.  The phrase 'and them'
> (normally @ndhEm; @=schwa, dh=edh, E=epsilon) had exactly that meaning, so
that
> 'Joe and them ' meant Joe and his crowd, the people who hung about with
Joe
> etc.  I moved away from Canada in my early twenties and I don't know if
> this is still current.  I guess it's also syntactic, sort of...
>
> Geoff
>
> Geoffrey S. Nathan
> Department of Linguistics
> Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
> Carbondale, IL, 62901-4517
> Phone:  (618) 453-3421 (Office) / FAX (618) 453-6527
>          (618) 549-0106 (Home)
>                                                          geoffn at siu.edu
>