Composed number (also called "double plural")
Urmas Sutrop
Urmas.Sutrop at EKI.EE
Tue Oct 13 10:59:37 UTC 2009
Dear all
Such plurals exist also in Estonian, a Finno-Ugric language.
There is a collective marker –ik /-stik, e.g.
kild, Gen stem: killu ‘fragment, shard’
killu-stik, Gen stem: killustiku ‘rushed stone, splinters’ Collective
killu-stiku-d ‘different kinds of rushed stone’ Col-Pl,
but _kahte sorti killustikku_ ‘two different kinds of rushed stone’ for with numerals the headword takes SG Partitive in Estonian, i.e. Coll behaves like Sg.
maa ‘earth, land’
maa-stik ‘landscape’
maa-stiku-d ‘landscapes’
põõsas, Gen stem põõsa: ‘a single bush’
põõsa-stik ‘shrub’
põõsa-stiku-d ‘shrubs’
mänd Gen stem männi: ‘pine’
männ-ik or männi-k ‘pine forest or a small group of pine trees (grove)’
männi-ku-d Coll-Pl ‘pine forests’
lepp Gen stem lepa ‘alder’
lep-ik ‘alder forest or brushwood‘
lep-iku-d Coll-Pl ‘alder forests’
etc.
Collective is not productive in modern Estonian and limited to a small number of words related to forest types and other natural phenomena.
Best wishes,
Urmas Sutrop
Wolfgang Schulze <W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de> wrote ..
> Dear Bernard,
>
> Udi (East Caucasian, Lezgian branch) has lots of composed plurals, most
> of them, however, lexicalized. Yet in some instances, minimal pairs are
> still present, e.g.
>
> /pop / 'hair' (mass)
> /pop-ur/ 'hair' (collective)
> /pop-ur-ux/ '[many strings of] hair'
>
> /bush / 'camel'
> /bush-ur /'group of camels'
> /bush-ur-ux/ 'camels'
>
> Historically, /-ur /once denoted (class speicifc) colelctives, and /-ux
> /'multiple individuation'....
> I can send you the relevant section of my forthcoming 'Grammar of Udi',
> if you want....
>
> Best wishes,
> Wolfgang
>
>
> Bernhard Waelchli schrieb:
> > Dear typologists,
> >
> > Does anybody know of more languages with double nominal plural (or
> > dual/trial/paucal) marking where both plural (or dual/trial/paucal)
> > markers added to the same noun express different kinds of
> > plurality/duality? This is called "composed numbers" in Corbett (2000:
> > 36, "number built as it were on another"). I mean cases such as, e.g.:
> >
> > (a) X-PL 'Xs',
> > X-PL-PL 'different groups/sets of Xs, large quantities of X'
> >
> > (b) X-PL 'a plurale tantum X',
> > X-PL-PL 'a plural of a plurale tantum X'
> >
> > Paraphrasing the question for the specific (b)-kind:
> > Does anybody know languages where pluralia/dualia tantum can be
> > pluralized just by adding another plural/dual marker?
> >
> > I know of the following languages with composed numbers (or groups of
> > languages): Ful, Burushaski, Breton, Warekena, and Mongolian. It has
> > also been reported for Khamtanga (Chamir, Agaw, Cushitic), and Arabic.
> > According to Corbett (2000: 36) composed number is rare, but I am
> > rather confident that somebody of you knows about some more examples
> > of a similiar kind as those:
> >
> > Ful (Adamawa) (Klingenheben 1963: 139)
> > nagge 'cow[SG] > cow'
> > na'i 'cow[PL] > cows'
> > na'i-ije 'cow[PL]-PL > groups/flocks of cows'
> >
> > Burushaski (Lorimer 1935: 46)
> > tsəriš SG 'one part of a door frame'
> > tsərʌŋ PL 'one complete doorframe'
> > tsərʌŋ-čiŋ DOUBLE-PL 'door frames'
> >
> > Breton (Ternes 1992: 415; Corbett 2000: 36)
> > bugel 'child > child'
> > bugal-e 'child-PL > children'
> > bugal-e-où 'child-PL-PL > groups of children'
> >
> > Warekena (Aikhenvald 1998: 300-4; Corbett 2000: 37)
> > abida-pe 'pig-PL > pigs'
> > abida-nawi 'pig-GREATER.PL > very many pigs'
> > abida-pe-nawi 'pig-PL-GREATER.PL > very many pigs indeed, too many to
> > count'
> >
> > Khalkha Mongolian (Poppe 1970; Plank, 1985: Linguistics 23.45-82)
> > lamə [SG] 'lama'
> > lamə-nər PL 'lamas'
> > lamə-nər-uud PL-PL 'highly esteemed lamas'
> >
> > (As far as I know, no triple plural with three different kinds of
> > plural meanings has been reported. Or does somebody have any?)
> >
> > (I am NOT interested in this query in the more common case of two or
> > more distinct plural suffixes expressing just a single kind of
> > plurality, such as in Dutch _kind-er-en_ 'children' [or etymologically
> > English _child-r-en_] or the more spectacular case of Breton
> > diminutives, Stump 1990, Corbett 2000: 152)
> >
> > Many thanks in advance!
> >
> > Bernhard Waelchli
> > University of Bern
> >
>
> --
>
> *Prof. Dr. Wolfgang
> Schulze *
>
>
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