Friday, September 19, 2014

Detail #100: Some ideas about counters

Counters are fairly interesting words. If you're not familiar with them, they function a bit like 'heads of' or 'pieces of' work in English NPs along the lines of the following sample:

  • five head of cattle
  • six pieces of metal
  • ten grains of sand

Languages that use such words more often - and where they are semantically more bleached than in the English examples above - sometimes are described as having only mass nouns. Such descriptions may exaggerate what is going on, but I will not get into that right now.

Obviously, counters enable some neat shenanigans with regards to noun-class-like things.
However, I started thinking about other things these words could be used. The prototypical use is basically along the line presented above - whenever the noun phrase has a quantifier, it needs a counter.

A few ideas that probably don't go all that well together:

  • predicative amounts: five CNT house = five house(s), house five CNT = there are five houses
  • plural existential statements: solution CNT = there are solutions. The singular would be done by some construction that is invariant with regards to noun class.
  • distinguishing indefinite determiners - some distinction like some vs. any marked simply by having a counter or not having one.
  • separate counters for specific or estimated amounts. 
  • distinguishing communal possession from separate possession - both with predicative possession and attributive possession. (i.e. 'the family's houses (owned communally)' vs. 'the houses of the family members')
  • individuating plural actors who would normally be assumed to be acting in consort with regards to certain verbs (CNT we go there' - we go there, each by our own path/manner/etc. CNT the family eat = the members of the family all get some nutrition in whatever way, vs. the family eat = the family eats a meal together. 

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