Detail #46: Collective numbers, inalienable possession and derivative nouns

A derivative morpheme that forms collectives - 

five.COL = a quintet, a group of five

cow.COL = a herd of cows

By itself this is not particularly interesting, but let us add that the language has inalienably possessed nouns, such as

brother, sister, wife, husband, father, mother, uncle, nephew, aunt, ...

hand, arm, leg, belly, 

funeral, wedding, baptism (or similar), confirmation (or similar), 

home, farmland, village, ...

Now, since these are inalienably possessed, there is no way of speaking about, say, villages in general or brothers in general or anything like that. Derivative morphology can be applied to non-possessed stems, though, and thus you can get brother.COL, sister.COL, hand.COL, etc. If this language has plural congruence with collectives, this can be violated to mark that it's really just the general case of hand or brother or funeral that is discussed.

With family terminology, though, collectives normally refer to the general case - collective siblings are any set of siblings, for instance. Double plural congruence on the verb, in this case, could signify that several collectives are involved.

If, on the other hand, the language does not use plural congruence with collectives, plural verbs would mark that several collectives are involved. To mark that it is just one single item in the collective, the number one before the collective would signify the number.