--- In Nostratica@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:

> On Wed, 02 Jul 2003 02:25:08 +0000, Rob <magwich78@...> wrote:
> >> You mean plural nouns?
> >
> >Perhaps.
>
> You said:
>
> -When it
> -was deemed necessary to distinguish grammatical number in

pronouns,

> -typically a plural formant was added to the preexisting personal
> -suffixes (this was often the same as the plural formant for the
> -plural pronouns)
>
> which makes no sense. I assumed you meant to write: "... which was

often

> the same as the plural formant for the plural nouns"
>
> This is not the way it usually works. There are plenty of

languages that

> do not distinguish singular from plural nouns, but still

distinguish number

> in the pronouns. I can't think of any language right now where the
> converse is the case.

I'll stick my neck out on this one. In Thai (i.e. Siamese) I can't
think of any obvious way of marking number in a 2nd or 3rd person
pronoun, but I can use _laai_ 'several, many' if I need to mark a
noun as plural. Also, Thai also has, for optional use, plural
demonstrative adjectives (launii, launan :: nii, nan). Plurality is
marked, suppletively, in the 1st person, but there there is more than
just plurality: we = I + he/they, I + you, or I + you + he/they and
only in group declarations (e.g. chants, prayers) is it I + I +...
(Thai rau 'we' does not mark any such distinctions; remarkably, it
does not have any of the 'respect' markings found in most of the
other pronouns.)

This lack of (optional) plural marking is odd, because several, if
not most, of the Thai 2nd/3rd person pronouns were once nouns. Also,
I don't think this lack of plural marking is ancient. However, I
don't think a discussion of the historical details is relevant to
Nostratic.

Richard.