Re: [tied] All of creation in Six and Seven

On Tue, 18 Nov 2003 03:00:57 +0100 (MET), Harald Hammarstrom
<haha2581@...> wrote:

>> The suffix -at(u) is not only a feminine marker, but also a plural/collective.
>
>How do you get that? It is contrary to e.g Classical Arabic cases like
>shajarun 'tree (collective/material)' vs. shajaratun '(one piece of) tree'
>or H.ajarun 'stone, rock (collective)' vs H.ajaratun '(one individual)
>rock' and other cases with animals.

Correct, -at- is also a singulative marker in Arabic (and Hebrew). The
usual function of -at-, besides marking the feminine, is to make abstract
nouns. It's not a big step from abstract nouns to collectives (and vice
versa), but the Semitic data does not support -at- as a collective
directly, unless one connects -at- with the undoubtedly plural/collective
morpheme -a:t-/-u:t-.

>> The noun being counted is in the genitive plural, so "3 X's" in the
>> masculine was:
>>
>> *Tala:T-at-u X-i:-n
>>
>> with the numeral in the nom. of the plural collective (-at-u) and the noun
>> in the gen. of the (broken) plural (-i:-).
>>
>> The feminine we would have expected to be:
>>
>> **Tala:T-at-u X-a:t-i,
>>
>> but is in fact:
>>
>> **Tala:T-u X-a:t-i,
>>
>> with deletion of one instance of the suffix -a(:)t-. We can compare the
>> deletion in the feminine plural of the plural definiteness marker -n.
>
>But this analysis leaves 11-19 unexplained because there we do have
>similar (if not identical - just an intervening 3ashrun) opposition
>between the masc. and fem. forms but the noun being counted is in the
>acc. sg.. No construct or gen. pl. here (but I am not sure it goes back
>to PSem of course).

I was assuming that was analogical after the tens (20-90) which take the
counted noun in the acc.sg. I haven't given much thought to where that
comes from.


=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...