Re: [tied] The dual.

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 7000
Date: 2001-04-05

The PIE dual was not strictly "paral" (it seems to have been automatically used with the numeral "two" through obligatory number agreement, for example), but the last stage of its survival in the daughter languages was usually like that (restricted to natural pairs: [the two] eyes, ears, hands, twins, parent and child, a couple/pair/brace of something). In Slavic, the dual survives in Slovene and in the Lower and Upper Sorbian languages. Polish lost it for good some 200-300 years ago, and at present we only have several fossilised duals used as plurals (unsurprisingly, these include "eyes", "ears", and "hands") and a few fixed phrases and proverbs involving historical duals, e.g. "Ma,drej gl/owie dos'c' dwie sl/owie" 'To a wise head, a couple of words will suffice' (Modern Polish speakers are not aware of the historical meaning of those forms and often distort them).
 
Piotr
 
----- Original Message -----
From: markodegard@...
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2001 1:19 AM
Subject: [tied] The dual.

I'd been meaning to post a question about the dual, but the recent conversation has largely cleared up those questions I was capable of formulating.

One question I do have is about the semantic space the (post-Anatolic) PIE dual occupied. I gather the Arabic dual covers two of anything (one dog and one flea would be 'animal[dual-ending]). I never go far enough in Greek to figure out the Greek dual, beyond the fact it was moribund even in early Classic times (and was extinct by the time the New Testament got written). Hebrew is interesting, in that its dual is almost 100% parallel in usage to the English concept of 'pair', 'things that come in **natural** twos, as with body parts, or in modern terms, auto headlamps or stereo speakers, i.e., Hebrew and English both distinguish between a pair of shoes and two shoes, with Hebrew doing the former distinction with the dual number.

I'm trying to remember. Slavic still has the dual, doesn't it? Who else?

Grammatical number, and how/why it developed in the first place is another question. Languages without grammatical number are quite capable of distinguishing one, more than one, many, and a specific amount.

I've speculated that the descendant of English *might* be the first IE language to lose grammatical number. If we had some easy, unambiguous 'count particles', only some slight adjustments would be necessary.