Dan the Silly Man wrote:
> On Wednesday, March 27, 2002, at 03:23 , [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> > Secondly, as you say, dictating what the plural in various languages
> > should be, borders on arrogance, but is probably just plain old
> > silliness.
>
> Even more arrogantly speaking, the very notion of plural forms may well
> be just plain old silliness.
Hardly. As shown by the passion displayed by certain parties for
getting it "correct" in particular languages. Plural formation,
as any other morphological or syntactic rules that a particular
language may have, is simply part of the required grammatical apparatus
for that language.
> Chinese has none, neither does Japanese
You overlooked the pronominal plurals in both languages. :-)
Both languages also have group numeric classifiers ("a group of actors",
"7 bundles of sticks", etc.) that are inherently plural.
> and I belive neither does Korean. It seems the older (or may I say, the
> more mature) the language is, the less sintactic sugar it has.
Nope. In some historical sense all natural languages are equally old
(except those originating in creoles). Whether they have simple or
complex morphology and syntax is a contingent matter of the interaction
of their systems of grammar through time and the nature of their
contact and interaction with similar and different languages.
> I can
> brag all about how syntactically simple Japanese is
It isn't. ;-)
Try this one on for size -- the opening sentence in the dedication of
Sanseido's Unicode Kanji Information Dictionary:
Nihon de Yunikoodo no namae o kanshita Kanjijoohoojiten ga hakkoo
sareru koto ni taishite, Yunikoodokonsooshiamu no purezidento to shite,
o-iwai to o-rei o mooshiageru koto wa, watakushi no tainaru yorokobi
de ari meiyo na koto desu.
I'll give you a hint. The outer layer of bracketing is:
{ [X] koto } wa { [Y] koto } desu [i.e. "[X] is [Y]."]
Your homework is to unravel the rest of the nominal, verbal, and
adverbial clauses and phrases here, and to explain to the rest of
us why that is syntactically simple. :-)
Incidentally, such sentences are not at all unusual in Japanese.
> but it seems Chinese
> have us all beat with respect to that.
Not really. Chinese has a minimum of formal morphological apparatus
in its grammar -- it is often termed an "isolating" morphological
type. But it has its own syntactic subtleties in complex sentence
construction. Don't underestimate it. It just isn't the kind of
arbitrary tables of case, tense, and number endings for irregular
nouns and verbs that European language learners are more inclined
to focus on as causing difficulties.
--Ken
