I imagine this might actually be something that exists in a language. Consider first and second person pronouns and number. Normally, the number marked is the number of the group discussed. I.e. when I say 'we', I might very well be the single person present who belongs to this 'we'. Of course, there's clusivity which can clarify this, but let's consider plural 'you'. This may very well be uttered towards a single person who represents a group that mostly is absent.
Is there any language that encodes both the number of the group it refers to, as well as the number of persons currently present out of that group?
In part, however, this might even be a bit redundant, and we could introduce a further complication beyond the redundancy.
The obvious uses are:
1-singular-plural: I who am the only person present, and some people
2-singular-plural: you who are the only person present, and some people
Is the second slot meant to signify number of non-present, or is it meant to include 'the full number of referents'? These two give different interpretations:
interpretation 1: 1-plural-plural: I, and some people
interpretation 2: 1-plural-plural: I, and some people who are present, and some other people
Thus, we here have two options: conflate the distinction whenever several members of the group are present, or distinguish them thus:
1-plural: I and some people who are present
1-plural-plural: I, and some people who are present and some people who aren't
Naturally, this should be easy to extend to duals and trials.
An interesting simple approach for a conlang could be this though: just have singular and plural, and distinguish by number of addressees.Also, 'I' can mean 'we' if only I, out of the whole group, am present.
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