The functions and the developments of the dual form in Maltese

Camilleri, Maris

doi:10.1007/s11525-015-9255-2

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…See also Thomson () who demonstrates that the Hebrew pseudo‐dual is semantically a plural marker. Maltese has a similar distribution with: (i) a real dual with nouns for time, number, weights, measures, coins, food and some familiar objects; (ii) an empty dual morph after nouns denoting parts of the body not necessarily in pairs but always followed by a pronominal suffix; and (iii) dual form used as a plural allomorph, mainly for parts of the body in pairs (Fenech : 89, see also Camilleri ). In the second function the noun is semantically singular, e.g.…”

Section: The ‘Dual’mentioning

confidence: 99%

Grammatical Number in Welsh: Diachrony and Typology

Nurmio

2019

Trans of the Philol Soc

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Section: The ‘Dual’mentioning

confidence: 99%

Grammatical Number in Welsh: Diachrony and Typology

Nurmio

2019

Trans of the Philol Soc

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“…Such nouns include a number denoting paired body parts e.g. driegħ 'arm', dirgħajn 'arms' (not 'two arms') (Fenech 1996, Camilleri 2015, suggesting that the Maltese dual formerly also encompassed Plank's category (ii). 6 Corbett (2000) does, however, treat the Slovene dual as a (minor) number even though a noun must be preceded by 'two' in order to license it.…”

Section: The Numerative In Crosslinguistic Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

The rise and fall of a minor category

Nurmio

Willis

2016

JHL

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Some languages use a special form of the noun, a “numerative”, after some or all numerals. In such languages, a distinct numerative is typically not available for all nouns, but rather only for a small subset, forming a morphological “minor category” (Corbett 2000). We examine how such a system emerges and disintegrates diachronically, looking in detail at Welsh, a language in which a distinct numerative emerged as the result of the phonological attrition of plural suffixes and analogical extension of new plural suffixes to all relevant syntactic environments except after numerals. Nouns with distinct numeratives tend to be animate and to denote units frequently counted, an association previously noted also for minor duals (Plank 1996). We suggest that this association arose in Welsh via differential analogical extension in two directions: animates resisted analogical extension of the pattern numeral + singular noun; and animates were most receptive to extension of the pattern numeral + numerative. We show that the loss of the numerative proceeded the same way in reverse: numeratives were first reanalyzed as special plurals, and this pattern, numeral + plural noun, resisted analogical spread of the dominant numeral + singular pattern most robustly with kinship terms and a unit of time, namely ‘year’. These developments show much commonality with other cases where the diachrony of the numerative is known, confirming the observation that numeratives typically emerge from the disintegration of a major category, such as plural or dual, and that they are diachronically unstable, liable ultimately to analogical elimination.

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The functions and the developments of the dual form in Maltese

Cited by 2 publications

References 11 publications

Grammatical Number in Welsh: Diachrony and Typology

Grammatical Number in Welsh: Diachrony and Typology

The rise and fall of a minor category

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