Sunday, October 8, 2017

A Number and Numeral-Related Thing in Sargaĺk and Dairwueh

There's no need for a language to have a 'perfect' analogy to the word 'both' (despite the fact that it exists in several subfamilies of European as well as in several Uralic languages, and these are only the ones I've been able to verify that they are not direct cognates or derivatives of the lexeme for 'two'). However, Sargaĺk manages to double that, by having two words with similar meanings but different morphosyntactical behaviours as well as slight differences in meaning.

In Sargaĺk, two is yor. 'Both' is either vrir or lyəs. Vrir takes a formally singular noun after it:
vrirtame-ta
bothmanpegative
sg
bothmen
There are some complications: vrir does not distinguish the absolutive and pegative. For nominative or pegative nouns, it is always itself unmarked, but has the pegative singular marker on the main noun. For all other cases, the noun is in the singular case, and vrir takes the singular oblique case congruence:
vri(r)tame-rne
bothsingular
masculine
oblique
mansingular
lative
bothmento
Lyəs however, takes plural congruence with all cases and the main noun too is consistently plural. As subjects the verb for both of lyəs and vrir take plural congruence, except if vrir is used with certain words like 'hands', 'eyes', 'ears', 'nostrils', 'scissors' or 'the side of a boat'.

Both of these can also be used as pronouns, much like English 'both'. They can also be used for a dual reflexive construction which can be used with any subject numbering two, regardless of morphological number.

The semantic difference lies in the extent to which the two referents are seen as separate units ('lyəs') or a concerted group ('vrir')

In Dairwueh, a cognate of vrir exists, ŋrəz. This particle has a few uses that have developed out of an original meaning of 'both': in NPs it goes before any number to mark 'all N of', but without any explicit number present it signifies 'both'. In numeral complements it serves to mark the number as that of a group, rather than as a number of independent individuals.  This it also does with plural, indefinite determiners and pronouns, thus:
guniŋrəztirs
are.3pl(both)six
they aresix
They are (a group of) six.
v.s.
gunitirs
be.3plsix
they aresix
they number six, there are six of them, (but as individual things)
ŋrəz is the only 'numeral' in Dairwueh to take case. It roughly follows the plural paradigms:
masculine:
nom: ŋrəzo
acc: ŋrizna
dat: ŋrizit
gen: ŋriŋa / ŋridin
loc-instr: ŋriŋa / ŋrider
feminine:
nom: ŋriri
acc: ŋrizar
dat: ŋrizit
gen: ŋrizin
loc-instr: ŋrizar
neuter:
nom: ŋrəza
acc: ŋrəza
dat: ŋrizit
gen: ŋrizit
loc-instr: ŋriŋa

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