The plural (sometimes abbreviated as pl. , pl , or PL ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical category of number . The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the default quantity represented by that noun. This default quantity is most commonly one (a form that represents this default quantity of one is said to be of singular number). Therefore, plurals most typically denote two or more of something, although they may also denote fractional, zero or negative amounts. An example of a plural is the English word boys , which corresponds to the singular boy .
75-488: The Roman Month (German Römer Monat , pl. Römer Monate , abbr. RM) was a basic unit of imperial taxation in the Holy Roman Empire , initially worth around 128,000 Rhenish guilders when the underlying tax was created in 1521 by the emperor Charles V , equivalent to a month's wages for around 4,202 cavalry and 20,063 infantrymen. It gained this title due to its initial purpose of providing for one month's escort for
150-717: A massive plural and a numerative plural , the first implying a large mass and the second implying division. For example, "the waters of the Atlantic Ocean" versus, "the waters of [each of] the Great Lakes". Ghil'ad Zuckermann uses the term superplural to refer to massive plural. He argues that the Australian Aboriginal Barngarla language has four grammatical numbers: singular, dual, plural and superplural . For example: A given language may make plural forms of nouns by various types of inflection , including
225-573: A coordinate branch with Malayo-Polynesian, rather than a sister family to Austronesian. Sagart's resulting classification is: The Malayo-Polynesian languages are—among other things—characterized by certain sound changes, such as the mergers of Proto-Austronesian (PAN) *t/*C to Proto-Malayo-Polynesian (PMP) *t, and PAN *n/*N to PMP *n, and the shift of PAN *S to PMP *h. There appear to have been two great migrations of Austronesian languages that quickly covered large areas, resulting in multiple local groups with little large-scale structure. The first
300-496: A few languages, such as Malay and the Chamic languages , are indigenous to mainland Asia. Many Austronesian languages have very few speakers, but the major Austronesian languages are spoken by tens of millions of people. For example, Indonesian is spoken by around 197.7 million people. This makes it the eleventh most-spoken language in the world . Approximately twenty Austronesian languages are official in their respective countries (see
375-521: A given language family can be traced from the area of greatest linguistic variety to that of the least. For example, English in North America has large numbers of speakers, but relatively low dialectal diversity, while English in Great Britain has much higher diversity; such low linguistic variety by Sapir's thesis suggests a more recent spread of English in North America. While some scholars suspect that
450-415: A lesser extent) dual are extremely rare. Languages with numerical classifiers such as Chinese and Japanese lack any significant grammatical number at all, though they are likely to have plural personal pronouns . Some languages (like Mele-Fila ) distinguish between a plural and a greater plural. A greater plural refers to an abnormally large number for the object of discussion. The distinction between
525-544: A plural form can pull double duty as the singular form (or vice versa), as has happened with the word "data" . The plural is used, as a rule, for quantities other than one (and other than those quantities represented by other grammatical numbers, such as dual, which a language may possess). Thus it is frequently used with numbers higher than one ( two cats , 101 dogs , four and a half hours ) and for unspecified amounts of countable things ( some men , several cakes , how many lumps? , birds have feathers ). The precise rules for
600-617: A plural sense, as in the government are agreed . The reverse is also possible: the United States is a powerful country . See synesis , and also English plural § Singulars as plural and plurals as singular . In part-of-speech tagging notation, tags are used to distinguish different types of plurals based on their grammatical and semantic context. Resolution varies, for example the Penn-Treebank tagset (~36 tags) has two tags: NNS - noun, plural, and NPS - Proper noun, plural , while
675-489: A plural when it means water from a particular source ( different waters make for different beers ) and in expressions like by the waters of Babylon . Certain collective nouns do not have a singular form and exist only in the plural, such as " clothes ". There are also nouns found exclusively or almost exclusively in the plural, such as the English scissors . These are referred to with the term plurale tantum . Occasionally,
750-540: A presumed sister language of Proto-Austronesian . The linguist Ann Kumar (2009) proposed that some Austronesians might have migrated to Japan, possibly an elite-group from Java , and created the Japanese-hierarchical society. She also identifies 82 possible cognates between Austronesian and Japanese, however her theory remains very controversial. The linguist Asha Pereltsvaig criticized Kumar's theory on several points. The archaeological problem with that theory
825-739: A relatively high number of affixes , and clear morpheme boundaries. Most affixes are prefixes ( Malay and Indonesian ber-jalan 'walk' < jalan 'road'), with a smaller number of suffixes ( Tagalog titis-án 'ashtray' < títis 'ash') and infixes ( Roviana t<in>avete 'work (noun)' < tavete 'work (verb)'). Reduplication is commonly employed in Austronesian languages. This includes full reduplication ( Malay and Indonesian anak-anak 'children' < anak 'child'; Karo Batak nipe-nipe 'caterpillar' < nipe 'snake') or partial reduplication ( Agta taktakki 'legs' < takki 'leg', at-atu 'puppy' < atu 'dog'). It
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#1732855950662900-553: A rough estimate of how wealthy each individual territory in the Empire was, with some of the larger, richer territories obligated to provide hundreds of men, while the smaller lords provided as few as five. Through this system, almost 400 separate territories were obligated to pay something to the Empire, while leaving collection and payment of the tax up to the regional territorial powers, preserving local independence. This obligation could be multiplied when more funds were required, allowing
975-456: A total number of 18 consonants. Complete absence of final consonants is observed e.g. in Nias , Malagasy and many Oceanic languages . Tonal contrasts are rare in Austronesian languages, although Moken–Moklen and a few languages of the Chamic , South Halmahera–West New Guinea and New Caledonian subgroups do show lexical tone. Most Austronesian languages are agglutinative languages with
1050-408: A word may in fact have a number of plural forms, to allow for simultaneous agreement within other categories such as case , person and gender , as well as marking of categories belonging to the word itself (such as tense of verbs, degree of comparison of adjectives, etc.) Verbs often agree with their subject in number (as well as in person and sometimes gender). Examples of plural forms are
1125-505: Is a broad consensus that the homeland of the Austronesians was in Taiwan. This homeland area may have also included the P'eng-hu (Pescadores) islands between Taiwan and China and possibly even sites on the coast of mainland China, especially if one were to view the early Austronesians as a population of related dialect communities living in scattered coastal settlements. Linguistic analysis of
1200-514: Is difficult to make generalizations about the languages that make up a family as diverse as Austronesian. Very broadly, one can divide the Austronesian languages into three groups: Philippine-type languages, Indonesian-type languages and post-Indonesian type languages: The Austronesian language family has been established by the linguistic comparative method on the basis of cognate sets , sets of words from multiple languages, which are similar in sound and meaning which can be shown to be descended from
1275-446: Is disyllabic with the shape CV(C)CVC (C = consonant; V = vowel), and is still found in many Austronesian languages. In most languages, consonant clusters are only allowed in medial position, and often, there are restrictions for the first element of the cluster. There is a common drift to reduce the number of consonants which can appear in final position, e.g. Buginese , which only allows the two consonants /ŋ/ and /ʔ/ as finals, out of
1350-507: Is highly controversial. Sagart (2004) proposes that the numerals of the Formosan languages reflect a nested series of innovations, from languages in the northwest (near the putative landfall of the Austronesian migration from the mainland), which share only the numerals 1–4 with proto-Malayo-Polynesian, counter-clockwise to the eastern languages (purple on map), which share all numerals 1–10. Sagart (2021) finds other shared innovations that follow
1425-506: Is that, contrary to the claim that there was no rice farming in China and Korea in prehistoric times , excavations have indicated that rice farming has been practiced in this area since at least 5000 BC. There are also genetic problems. The pre-Yayoi Japanese lineage was not shared with Southeast Asians, but was shared with Northwest Chinese, Tibetans and Central Asians . Linguistic problems were also pointed out. Kumar did not claim that Japanese
1500-553: Is the first attestation of any Austronesian language. The Austronesian languages overall possess phoneme inventories which are smaller than the world average. Around 90% of the Austronesian languages have inventories of 19–25 sounds (15–20 consonants and 4–5 vowels), thus lying at the lower end of the global typical range of 20–37 sounds. However, extreme inventories are also found, such as Nemi ( New Caledonia ) with 43 consonants. The canonical root type in Proto-Austronesian
1575-579: Is used after zéro . English also tends to use the plural with decimal fractions , even if less than one, as in 0.3 metres , 0.9 children . Common fractions less than one tend to be used with singular expressions: half (of) a loaf , two-thirds of a mile . Negative numbers are usually treated the same as the corresponding positive ones: minus one degree , minus two degrees . Again, rules on such matters differ between languages. In some languages, including English, expressions that appear to be singular in form may be treated as plural if they are used with
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#17328559506621650-589: The French mangeons, mangez, mangent – respectively the first-, second- and third-person plural of the present tense of the verb manger . In English a distinction is made in the third person between forms such as eats (singular) and eat (plural). Adjectives may agree with the noun they modify; examples of plural forms are the French petits and petites (the masculine plural and feminine plural respectively of petit ). The same applies to some determiners – examples are
1725-580: The Japonic languages to the proposal as well. A link with the Austroasiatic languages in an ' Austric ' phylum is based mostly on typological evidence. However, there is also morphological evidence of a connection between the conservative Nicobarese languages and Austronesian languages of the Philippines. Robert Blust supports the hypothesis which connects the lower Yangtze neolithic Austro-Tai entity with
1800-699: The King of the Romans ' trip to Rome to be crowned Holy Roman Emperor by the Pope (the Italienzug ), though it was rarely, if ever, used for this purpose. The tax was collected through a system that reflected the divided, corporate nature of the Holy Roman Empire. Though the local territorial powers recognized the need for a common purse to protect and preserve the Empire, they were simultaneously unwilling to surrender power to
1875-535: The Kra-Dai family considered to be a branch of Austronesian, and "Yangzian" to be a new sister branch of Sino-Tibetan consisting of the Austroasiatic and Hmong-Mien languages. This proposal was further researched on by linguists such as Michael D. Larish in 2006, who also included the Japonic and Koreanic languages in the macrofamily. The proposal has since been adopted by linguists such as George van Driem , albeit without
1950-468: The Kra-Dai languages of the southeastern continental Asian mainland was first proposed by Paul K. Benedict , and is supported by Weera Ostapirat, Roger Blench , and Laurent Sagart, based on the traditional comparative method . Ostapirat (2005) proposes a series of regular correspondences linking the two families and assumes a primary split, with Kra-Dai speakers being the people who stayed behind in their Chinese homeland. Blench (2004) suggests that, if
2025-524: The colonial period . It ranged from Madagascar off the southeastern coast of Africa to Easter Island in the eastern Pacific. Hawaiian , Rapa Nui , Māori , and Malagasy (spoken on Madagascar) are the geographic outliers. According to Robert Blust (1999), Austronesian is divided into several primary branches, all but one of which are found exclusively in Taiwan. The Formosan languages of Taiwan are grouped into as many as nine first-order subgroups of Austronesian. All Austronesian languages spoken outside
2100-409: The list of major and official Austronesian languages ). By the number of languages they include, Austronesian and Niger–Congo are the two largest language families in the world. They each contain roughly one-fifth of the world's languages. The geographical span of Austronesian was the largest of any language family in the first half of the second millennium CE, before the spread of Indo-European in
2175-423: The Austronesian languages in a recursive-like fashion, placing Kra-Dai as a sister branch of Malayo-Polynesian. His methodology has been found to be spurious by his peers. Several linguists have proposed that Japanese is genetically related to the Austronesian family, cf. Benedict (1990), Matsumoto (1975), Miller (1967). Some other linguists think it is more plausible that Japanese is not genetically related to
2250-565: The Austronesian languages to be related to the Sino-Tibetan languages , and also groups the Kra–Dai languages as more closely related to the Malayo-Polynesian languages . Sagart argues for a north-south genetic relationship between Chinese and Austronesian, based on sound correspondences in the basic vocabulary and morphological parallels. Laurent Sagart (2017) concludes that the possession of
2325-415: The Austronesian languages, but instead was influenced by an Austronesian substratum or adstratum . Those who propose this scenario suggest that the Austronesian family once covered the islands to the north as well as to the south. Martine Robbeets (2017) claims that Japanese genetically belongs to the "Transeurasian" (= Macro-Altaic ) languages, but underwent lexical influence from "para-Austronesian",
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2400-528: The CLAWS 7 tagset (~149 tags) uses six: NN2 - plural common noun, NNL2 - plural locative noun, NNO2 - numeral noun, plural, NNT2 - temporal noun, plural, NNU2 - plural unit of measurement, NP2 - plural proper noun. Austronesian languages The Austronesian languages ( / ˌ ɔː s t r ə ˈ n iː ʒ ən / AW -strə- NEE -zhən ) are a language family widely spoken throughout Maritime Southeast Asia , parts of Mainland Southeast Asia , Madagascar ,
2475-605: The Emperor some flexibility in taxing his subjects while keeping the distribution somewhat equal among the various territories of the Holy Roman Empire. Sometimes, the multiple requested could be very high, such as in the Peace of Prague , where Emperor Ferdinand II requested 120 months, to help pay for the ongoing Thirty Years' War . Plural Words of other types, such as verbs , adjectives and pronouns , also frequently have distinct plural forms, which are used in agreement with
2550-488: The Emperor. Thus, instead of a direct tax collected by the Emperor, obligations were set through the Worms Reichsmatrikel on the individual Electors , Bishops , Princes , Prelates , Counts , Lords, Imperial Towns, and other political structures to provide a set number of horse and footmen, or a set amount of money based on the wages of the requested troops. The obligations of the territorial powers were based on
2625-418: The Formosan languages actually make up more than one first-order subgroup of Austronesian. Robert Blust (1977) first presented the subgrouping model which is currently accepted by virtually all scholars in the field, with more than one first-order subgroup on Taiwan, and a single first-order branch encompassing all Austronesian languages spoken outside of Taiwan, viz. Malayo-Polynesian . The relationships of
2700-454: The Formosan languages to each other and the internal structure of Malayo-Polynesian continue to be debated. In addition to Malayo-Polynesian , thirteen Formosan subgroups are broadly accepted. The seminal article in the classification of Formosan—and, by extension, the top-level structure of Austronesian—is Blust (1999) . Prominent Formosanists (linguists who specialize in Formosan languages) take issue with some of its details, but it remains
2775-434: The French plural definite article les , and the English demonstratives these and those . It is common for pronouns , particularly personal pronouns , to have distinct plural forms. Examples in English are we ( us , etc.) and they ( them etc.; see English personal pronouns ), and again these and those (when used as demonstrative pronouns ). In Welsh, a number of common prepositions also inflect to agree with
2850-641: The Proto-Austronesian language stops at the western shores of Taiwan; any related mainland language(s) have not survived. The only exceptions, the Chamic languages , derive from more recent migration to the mainland. However, according to Ostapirat's interpretation of the seriously discussed Austro-Tai hypothesis, the Kra–Dai languages (also known as Tai–Kadai) are exactly those related mainland languages. Genealogical links have been proposed between Austronesian and various families of East and Southeast Asia . An Austro-Tai proposal linking Austronesian and
2925-468: The Taiwan mainland (including its offshore Yami language ) belong to the Malayo-Polynesian (sometimes called Extra-Formosan ) branch. Most Austronesian languages lack a long history of written attestation. This makes reconstructing earlier stages—up to distant Proto-Austronesian—all the more remarkable. The oldest inscription in the Cham language , the Đông Yên Châu inscription dated to c. 350 AD,
3000-501: The addition of affixes , like the English -(e)s and -ies suffixes , or ablaut , as in the derivation of the plural geese from goose , or a combination of the two. Some languages may also form plurals by reduplication , but not as productively. It may be that some nouns are not marked for plural at all, like sheep and series in English. In languages which also have a case system, such as Latin and Russian , nouns can have not just one plural form but several, corresponding to
3075-434: The connection is valid, the relationship is unlikely to be one of two sister families. Rather, he suggests that proto-Kra-Dai speakers were Austronesians who migrated to Hainan Island and back to the mainland from the northern Philippines, and that their distinctiveness results from radical restructuring following contact with Hmong–Mien and Sinitic . An extended version of Austro-Tai was hypothesized by Benedict who added
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3150-405: The deepest divisions in Austronesian are found along small geographic distances, among the families of the native Formosan languages . According to Robert Blust , the Formosan languages form nine of the ten primary branches of the Austronesian language family. Comrie (2001 :28) noted this when he wrote: ... the internal diversity among the... Formosan languages... is greater than that in all
3225-549: The dual and paucal can be found in some Slavic and Baltic languages (apart from those that preserve the dual number, such as Slovene ). These are known as "pseudo-dual" and "pseudo-paucal" grammatical numbers. For example, Polish and Russian use different forms of nouns with the numerals 2, 3, or 4 (and higher numbers ending with these ) than with the numerals 5, 6, etc. (genitive singular in Russian and nominative plural in Polish in
3300-423: The early Austronesian and Sino-Tibetan maternal gene pools, at least. Additionally, results from Wei et al. (2017) are also in agreement with Sagart's proposal, in which their analyses show that the predominantly Austronesian Y-DNA haplogroup O3a2b*-P164(xM134) belongs to a newly defined haplogroup O3a2b2-N6 being widely distributed along the eastern coastal regions of Asia, from Korea to Vietnam. Sagart also groups
3375-506: The east, and were treated by the Puyuma, amongst whom they settled, as a subservient group. This classification retains Blust's East Formosan, and unites the other northern languages. Li (2008) proposes a Proto-Formosan (F0) ancestor and equates it with Proto-Austronesian (PAN), following the model in Starosta (1995). Rukai and Tsouic are seen as highly divergent, although the position of Rukai
3450-581: The entire range of the Austronesian family, but the forms (e.g. Bunun dusa ; Amis tusa ; Māori rua ) require some linguistic expertise to recognise. The Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database gives word lists (coded for cognateness) for approximately 1000 Austronesian languages. The internal structure of the Austronesian languages is complex. The family consists of many similar and closely related languages with large numbers of dialect continua , making it difficult to recognize boundaries between branches. The first major step towards high-order subgrouping
3525-528: The entire region encompassed by the Austronesian languages. It is believed that this migration began around 6,000 years ago. However, evidence from historical linguistics cannot bridge the gap between those two periods. The view that linguistic evidence connects Austronesian languages to the Sino-Tibetan ones, as proposed for example by Sagart (2002) , is a minority one. As Fox (2004 :8) states: Implied in... discussions of subgrouping [of Austronesian languages]
3600-616: The family contains 1,257 languages, which is the second most of any language family. In 1706, the Dutch scholar Adriaan Reland first observed similarities between the languages spoken in the Malay Archipelago and by peoples on islands in the Pacific Ocean. In the 19th century, researchers (e.g. Wilhelm von Humboldt , Herman van der Tuuk ) started to apply the comparative method to the Austronesian languages. The first extensive study on
3675-399: The first lexicostatistical classification of the Austronesian languages, Isidore Dyen (1965) presented a radically different subgrouping scheme. He posited 40 first-order subgroups, with the highest degree of diversity found in the area of Melanesia . The Oceanic languages are not recognized, but are distributed over more than 30 of his proposed first-order subgroups. Dyen's classification
3750-430: The former case, genitive plural in the latter case). Also some nouns may follow different declension patterns when denoting objects which are typically referred to in pairs. For example, in Polish, the noun " oko ", among other meanings, may refer to a human or animal eye or to a drop of oil on water. The plural of " oko " in the first meaning is " oczy " (even if actually referring to more than two eyes), while in
3825-425: The group is probably not valid. Other studies have presented phonological evidence for a reduced Paiwanic family of Paiwanic , Puyuma, Bunun, Amis, and Malayo-Polynesian, but this is not reflected in vocabulary. The Eastern Formosan peoples Basay, Kavalan, and Amis share a homeland motif that has them coming originally from an island called Sinasay or Sanasay . The Amis, in particular, maintain that they came from
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#17328559506623900-456: The history of the phonology was made by the German linguist Otto Dempwolff . It included a reconstruction of the Proto-Austronesian lexicon. The term Austronesian was coined (as German austronesisch ) by Wilhelm Schmidt , deriving it from Latin auster "south" and Ancient Greek νῆσος ( nêsos "island"). Most Austronesian languages are spoken by island dwellers. Only
3975-747: The inclusion of Japonic and Koreanic. Blevins (2007) proposed that the Austronesian and the Ongan protolanguage are the descendants of an Austronesian–Ongan protolanguage. This view is not supported by mainstream linguists and remains very controversial. Robert Blust rejects Blevins' proposal as far-fetched and based solely on chance resemblances and methodologically flawed comparisons. Most Austronesian languages have Latin -based writing systems today. Some non-Latin-based writing systems are listed below. Below are two charts comparing list of numbers of 1–10 and thirteen words in Austronesian languages; spoken in Taiwan ,
4050-605: The islands of the Pacific Ocean and Taiwan (by Taiwanese indigenous peoples ). They are spoken by about 328 million people (4.4% of the world population ). This makes it the fifth-largest language family by number of speakers. Major Austronesian languages include Malay (around 250–270 million in Indonesia alone in its own literary standard named " Indonesian "), Javanese , Sundanese , Tagalog (standardized as Filipino ), Malagasy and Cebuano . According to some estimates,
4125-655: The lemma form, sometimes combining it with an additional vowel. (In French, however, this plural suffix is often not pronounced.) This construction is also found in German and Dutch, but only in some nouns. Suffixing is cross-linguistically the most common method of forming plurals. In Welsh , the reference form, or default quantity, of some nouns is plural, and the singular form is formed from it, e.g., llygod , mice -> llygoden , mouse; erfin , turnips -> erfinen , turnip. In many languages, words other than nouns may take plural forms, these being used by way of grammatical agreement with plural nouns (or noun phrases ). Such
4200-529: The linguistic research, rejecting an East Asian origin in favor of Taiwan (e.g., Trejaut et al. 2005 ). Archaeological evidence (e.g., Bellwood 1997 ) is more consistent, suggesting that the ancestors of the Austronesians spread from the South Chinese mainland to Taiwan at some time around 8,000 years ago. Evidence from historical linguistics suggests that it is from this island that seafaring peoples migrated, perhaps in distinct waves separated by millennia, to
4275-423: The number of principal branches among the Formosan languages may be somewhat less than Blust's estimate of nine (e.g. Li 2006 ), there is little contention among linguists with this analysis and the resulting view of the origin and direction of the migration. For a recent dissenting analysis, see Peiros (2004) . The protohistory of the Austronesian people can be traced farther back through time. To get an idea of
4350-772: The number of their associated nouns. Some languages also have a dual (denoting exactly two of something) or other systems of number categories. However, in English and many other languages, singular and plural are the only grammatical numbers, except for possible remnants of dual number in pronouns such as both and either . In many languages, there is also a dual number (used for indicating two objects). Some other grammatical numbers present in various languages include trial (for three objects) and paucal (for an imprecise but small number of objects). In languages with dual, trial, or paucal numbers, plural refers to numbers higher than those. However, numbers besides singular, plural, and (to
4425-411: The number, person, and sometimes gender of the noun or pronoun they govern. Certain nouns do not form plurals. A large class of such nouns in many languages is that of uncountable nouns , representing mass or abstract concepts such as air , information , physics . However, many nouns of this type also have countable meanings or other contexts in which a plural can be used; for example water can take
4500-451: The original homeland of the populations ancestral to the Austronesian peoples (as opposed to strictly linguistic arguments), evidence from archaeology and population genetics may be adduced. Studies from the science of genetics have produced conflicting outcomes. Some researchers find evidence for a proto-Austronesian homeland on the Asian mainland (e.g., Melton et al. 1998 ), while others mirror
4575-451: The paucal, the plural, and the greater plural is often relative to the type of object under discussion. For example, in discussing oranges, the paucal number might imply fewer than ten, whereas for the population of a country, it might be used for a few hundred thousand. The Austronesian languages of Sursurunga and Lihir have extremely complex grammatical number systems, with singular, dual, paucal, greater paucal, and plural. Traces of
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#17328559506624650-473: The point of reference for current linguistic analyses. Debate centers primarily around the relationships between these families. Of the classifications presented here, Blust (1999) links two families into a Western Plains group, two more in a Northwestern Formosan group, and three into an Eastern Formosan group, while Li (2008) also links five families into a Northern Formosan group. Harvey (1982), Chang (2006) and Ross (2012) split Tsouic, and Blust (2013) agrees
4725-483: The pseudo-dual as plural of "eyes" עין / עינים ʿạyin / ʿēnạyim "eye / eyes" as well as "hands", "legs" and several other words are retained. For further information, see Dual (grammatical number) § Hebrew . Certain nouns in some languages have the unmarked form referring to multiple items, with an inflected form referring to a single item. These cases are described with the terms collective number and singulative number . Some languages may possess
4800-414: The rest of Austronesian put together, so there is a major genetic split within Austronesian between Formosan and the rest... Indeed, the genetic diversity within Formosan is so great that it may well consist of several primary branches of the overall Austronesian family. At least since Sapir (1968) , writing in 1949, linguists have generally accepted that the chronology of the dispersal of languages within
4875-537: The rice-cultivating Austro-Asiatic cultures, assuming the center of East Asian rice domestication, and putative Austric homeland, to be located in the Yunnan/Burma border area. Under that view, there was an east-west genetic alignment, resulting from a rice-based population expansion, in the southern part of East Asia: Austroasiatic-Kra-Dai-Austronesian, with unrelated Sino-Tibetan occupying a more northerly tier. French linguist and Sinologist Laurent Sagart considers
4950-399: The same ancestral word in Proto-Austronesian according to regular rules. Some cognate sets are very stable. The word for eye in many Austronesian languages is mata (from the most northerly Austronesian languages, Formosan languages such as Bunun and Amis all the way south to Māori ). Other words are harder to reconstruct. The word for two is also stable, in that it appears over
5025-493: The same pattern. He proposes that pMP *lima 'five' is a lexical replacement (from 'hand'), and that pMP *pitu 'seven', *walu 'eight' and *Siwa 'nine' are contractions of pAN *RaCep 'five', a ligature *a or *i 'and', and *duSa 'two', *telu 'three', *Sepat 'four', an analogical pattern historically attested from Pazeh . The fact that the Kradai languages share the numeral system (and other lexical innovations) of pMP suggests that they are
5100-557: The second it is " oka " (even if actually referring to exactly two drops). Traces of dual can also be found in Modern Hebrew . Biblical Hebrew had grammatical dual via the suffix -ạyim as opposed to ־ים -īm for masculine words . Contemporary use of a true dual number in Hebrew is chiefly used in words regarding time and numbers. However, in Biblical and Modern Hebrew,
5175-535: The two kinds of millets in Taiwanese Austronesian languages (not just Setaria, as previously thought) places the pre-Austronesians in northeastern China, adjacent to the probable Sino-Tibetan homeland. Ko et al.'s genetic research (2014) appears to support Laurent Sagart's linguistic proposal, pointing out that the exclusively Austronesian mtDNA E-haplogroup and the largely Sino-Tibetan M9a haplogroup are twin sisters, indicative of an intimate connection between
5250-399: The use of plurals, however, depends on the language – for example Russian uses the genitive singular rather than the plural after certain numbers (see above). Treatments differ in expressions of zero quantity: English often uses the plural in such expressions as no injuries and zero points , although no (and zero in some contexts) may also take a singular. In French, the singular form
5325-481: The various cases. The inflection might affect multiple words, not just the noun; the noun itself need not become plural as such, with other parts of the expression indicating the plurality. In English, the most common formation of plural nouns is by adding an - s suffix to the singular noun. (For details and different cases, see English plurals .) Just like in English, noun plurals in French, Spanish, and Portuguese are also typically formed by adding an -s suffix to
5400-465: Was Dempwolff's recognition of the Oceanic subgroup (called Melanesisch by Dempwolff). The special position of the languages of Taiwan was first recognized by André-Georges Haudricourt (1965), who divided the Austronesian languages into three subgroups: Northern Austronesian (= Formosan ), Eastern Austronesian (= Oceanic ), and Western Austronesian (all remaining languages). In a study that represents
5475-430: Was Malayo-Polynesian, distributed across the Philippines, Indonesia, and Melanesia. The second migration was that of the Oceanic languages into Polynesia and Micronesia. From the standpoint of historical linguistics , the place of origin (in linguistic terminology, Urheimat ) of the Austronesian languages ( Proto-Austronesian language ) is most likely the main island of Taiwan , also known as Formosa; on this island
5550-503: Was an Austronesian language derived from proto-Javanese language, but only that it provided a superstratum language for old Japanese , based on 82 plausible Javanese-Japanese cognates, mostly related to rice farming. In 2001, Stanley Starosta proposed a new language family named East Asian , that includes all primary language families in the broader East Asia region except Japonic and Koreanic . This proposed family consists of two branches, Austronesian and Sino-Tibetan-Yangzian, with
5625-552: Was widely criticized and for the most part rejected, but several of his lower-order subgroups are still accepted (e.g. the Cordilleran languages , the Bilic languages or the Murutic languages ). Subsequently, the position of the Formosan languages as the most archaic group of Austronesian languages was recognized by Otto Christian Dahl (1973), followed by proposals from other scholars that
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