Misplaced Pages

#868131

89-518: Parroquia ( Spanish: [paˈrokja] , Galician: [paˈrɔkjɐ] , pl. parroquias ; Asturian: [paˈrokja] , pl. parroquies ) or Parròquia ( Catalan: [pəˈrɔkiə] , pl. parròquies ) is a term equivalent to the English Parish ; used in Andorra , Ecuador , Venezuela , Peru and some parts of northwestern Spain . It can be found in

178-487: A " half-life " of between 2,000 and 4,000 years, consistent with existing theories of linguistic replacement. However, they also identified some words – numerals, pronouns, and certain adverbs – that exhibit a much slower rate of replacement with half-lives of 10,000 to 20,000 or more years. Drawing from research in a diverse group of modern languages, the authors were able to show the same slow replacement rates for key words regardless of current pronunciation. They conclude that

267-401: A Eurasiatic language family. The branches of Eurasiatic vary between proposals, but typically include the highly controversial Altaic macrofamily (composed in part of Mongolic , Tungusic and Turkic ), Chukchi-Kamchatkan , Eskimo–Aleut , Indo-European , and Uralic —although Greenberg uses the controversial Uralic-Yukaghir classification instead. Other branches sometimes included are

356-762: A facultative trial, like in Ngan'gi . Most languages with a trial are in the Austronesian family, and most non-Austronesian languages with a trial are nearby in Oceania. The latter category includes the Austronesian-influenced English creole languages of Tok Pisin , Bislama , and Pijin . In Australia, the trial can also be found in Aboriginal languages of many different language families. In Indonesia, trial pronouns are common in

445-446: A given family). In contrast to traditional comparative linguistics, the researchers did not attempt to "prove" any given pairing as cognates (based on similar sounds), but rather treated each pairing as a binary random variable subject to error. The set of possible cognate pairings was then analyzed as a whole for predictable regularities. Words were separated into groupings based on how many language families appeared to be cognate for

534-487: A group of 100,000 referred to in the plural. Much like the dual, it is crosslinguistically variable which words and parts of speech may be marked with the paucal. Baiso has the paucal only for nouns and not pronouns, whereas Yimas has the paucal only for pronouns and not nouns. In Meryam Mir , the paucal is mostly marked on the verbs. Avar has the paucal for only about 90 specific nouns, including brush, spade, snake, and daughter-in-law (the only kin term that can take

623-457: A large number of something, and has been called the plural of abundance. In other languages like Kaytetye , it can refer to all of something in existence, and has been called the global plural. Like some other grammatical numbers, languages also vary as to which cases the greater plural may be used in. The greater plural is more common in nouns than in pronouns. Accordingly, in Kaytetye,

712-512: A minority of Russian linguists. Linguists worldwide reject Eurasiatic and many other macrofamily hypotheses such as Nostratic , with the exception of Dené–Yeniseian languages , which has been met with some degree of acceptance. In 1994 Merritt Ruhlen claimed Eurasiatic is supported by the existence of a grammatical pattern "whereby plurals of nouns are formed by suffixing - t to the noun root ... whereas duals of nouns are formed by suffixing - k ." Rasmus Rask noted this grammatical pattern in

801-619: A number distinction is pronouns. An example of a personal pronoun system distinguishing singular and plural is that of Wayoró : Like the singular denotes exactly one item, the dual number denotes exactly two items. For example, in Camsá : In languages with a singular/dual/plural paradigm, the exact meaning of plural depends on whether the dual is obligatory or facultative (optional). In contrast to English and other singular/plural languages where plural means two or more, in languages with an obligatory dual, plural strictly means three or more. This

890-567: A number larger than and beyond greater plural. It has also been called the "even greater plural". For example, in Warekena : A similar system is found in Banyun , where the greater plural represents unlimitedness, and the greatest plural represents "a higher degree of unlimitedness". Linguist Daniel Harbour has represented the paucal, greater paucal, plural, greater plural, and greatest plural as collectively definable by "cuts" that divide

979-533: A paucal. Similar things have been said about trial pronouns in Larike and Anejom̃ . Russian has what has variably been called paucal numerals, the count form, the adnumerative, or the genitive of quantification. When a noun in the nominative case has a numeral added to quantify it, the noun becomes genitive singular with 2, 3, or 4, but genitive plural with 5 or above. Many linguists have described these as paucal constructions. However, some have disagreed on

SECTION 10

#1732771776869

1068-477: A plural, leaving the former plural with a greater plural meaning. A different four-way distinction of singular, paucal, plural, and greater plural can be found in some verbs of Hualapai . A more complex system is found in Mele-Fila : pronouns distinguish singular, dual, plural, and greater plural, but articles attached to nouns distinguish singular, paucal, and plural. The result is that for full sentences, there

1157-445: A point has been made  [...] However, closer inspection  [...] shows too many misinterpretations, errors and wrong analyses  [...] these allow no other judgement than that [Greenberg's] attempt to demonstrate the validity of his Eurasiatic has failed." In the 1980s, Russian linguist Nikolai Dmitrievich Andreev  [ ru ] 's Boreal languages  [ ru ] hypothesis ( Russian : Бореальный язык ) linked

1246-431: A priori predictions about word classes more likely to retain sound and meaning over long periods of time. The authors write "Our ability to predict these words independently of their sound correspondences dilutes the usual criticisms leveled at such long-range linguistic reconstructions, that proto-words are unreliable or inaccurate, or that apparent phonetic similarities among them reflect chance sound resemblances." On

1335-407: A priori that attempts to find ancient relationships are bound to fail, examined Greenberg's claims in detail. They state that Greenberg's morphological arguments are the correct approach to determining families, but doubt his conclusions. They write "[Greenberg's] 72 morphemes look like massive evidence in favour of Eurasiatic at first glance. If valid, few linguists would have the right to doubt that

1424-481: A quadral or a quintal. Linguist Susan McBurney has contended that American Sign Language has a true dual, but that the trial, quadral, and quintal should instead be classified as numeral incorporation rather than grammatical number. This is motivated by the dual marker handshape being distinct from the handshape for the numeral two, in contrast to higher number markers; the ability to also incorporate these numerals into other words, including those for times and amounts; and

1513-479: A quadral; the final 2016 reference grammar of Marshallese by Byron W. Bender , a linguist with expertise in the language, still refers to it as having a quadral. Besides singular, dual, trial, and quadral or paucal, Marshallese additionally has two different plural forms, one for five or more and one for two or more (referred to as multiple and plural absolute respectively), creating a partially overlapping six-way number distinction. Kove has been recorded as having

1602-408: A rare pronoun form for exactly six people. Some American Sign Language speakers have incorporated numerals up to nine into inclusive pronouns upon solicitation. Israeli Sign Language theoretically has the grammatical ability to incorporate numerals up to ten into pronouns. Greater plural is a number larger than and beyond plural. In various forms across different languages, it has also been called

1691-533: A significant factor in the results on the basis that for a word to appear cognate in many language families solely because of borrowing would require frequent swapping back and forth. This is deemed unlikely because of the large geographical area covered by the language groups and because frequently-used words are the least likely to be borrowed in modern times. Finally, they state that leaving aside closed-class words with simple phonologies (e.g., I and we ) does not affect their conclusions. According to Greenberg,

1780-473: A similar pronoun system as Marshallese, with one addition: the plural (2+) is split between two categories, one for members of the same family and one for members of different families, creating a seven-way distinction. A few other languages have also been claimed to have quadral pronouns. Robert Blust and others have said they exist in some of the Austronesian Kenyah languages , specifically

1869-472: A slightly different branching, listing seven language families: Altaic [Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic], Chukchi-Kamchatkan, Dravidian , "Inuit-Yupik"—which is a name giving to LWED grouping of Inuit (Eskimo) languages that does not include Aleut —Indo-European, Kartvelian , and Uralic. Murray Gell-Mann , Ilia Peiros , and Georgiy Starostin group Chukotko-Kamchatkan and Nivkh with Almosan instead of Eurasiatic. Regardless of version, these lists cover

SECTION 20

#1732771776869

1958-509: A spoken language with the trial (in both pronouns and verbs) outside of Oceania is Muklom Tangsa , spoken in northeast India. The paucal number represents 'a few', a small inexactly numbered group of items. For example, in Motuna : Almost all languages with a paucal also have a dual. However, this is not universal. Nouns in Mocoví only have singular, paucal, and plural. On the other hand,

2047-828: A stable core of largely unchanging words is a common feature of all human discourse, and model replacement as inversely proportional to usage frequency. Pagel et al. used hypothesized reconstructions of proto-words from seven language families listed in the Languages of the World Etymological Database (LWED). They limited their search to the 200 most common words as described by the Swadesh fundamental vocabulary list . Twelve words were excluded because proto-words had been proposed for two or fewer language families. The remaining 188 words yielded 3804 different reconstructions (sometimes with multiple constructions for

2136-932: A subgroup within Nostratic alongside Afroasiatic , Kartvelian , and Dravidian . LWED likewise views Eurasiatic as a subfamily of Nostratic. The Nostratic family is not endorsed by the mainstream of comparative linguistics . Harold C. Fleming includes Eurasiatic as a subgroup of the hypothetical Borean family. The subdivisioning of Eurasiatic varies by proposal, but usually includes Turkic , Tungusic , Mongolic , Chukchi-Kamchatkan , Eskimo–Aleut , Indo-European , and Uralic . Greenberg enumerates eight branches of Eurasiatic, as follows: Altaic [Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic], Chukchi-Kamchatkan, Eskimo–Aleut, Etruscan , Indo-European, "Korean-Japanese-Ainu", Nivkh , and Uralic–Yukaghir . He then breaks these families into smaller sub-groups, some of which are themselves not widely accepted as phylogenetic groupings. Pagel et al. use

2225-456: A system of paucal, greater paucal, plural. Other examples can be found in the related languages of Northern Gumuz and Daatsʼiin . Northern Gumuz is said to mark the plural and greater plural on verbs, and Daatsʼiin is said to mark "three degrees of plurality" (plural, greater plural, and greatest plural) on verbs. In both languages though, the "plural" is often actually a paucal, understood to mean about two to four. However, in neither language

2314-869: A true quadral did exist, but it has since morphed into a plural form. It has thus been hypothesized that the quadral existed in Proto-Oceanic and Proto-Southern Vanuatu. The quintal number denotes exactly five items. Apparent examples of its use can mostly only be found in pronouns of sign languages. Like the quadral, its existence has been contested, and only some classifications accept it. Like trial and quadral forms, rare quintal forms of pronouns have been said to be attested in Tok Pisin and Bislama. These languages insert numerals to represent exact numbers of referents. For example, in Bislama, the numerals tu (two) and tri (three) are contained within

2403-514: Is Nukna , which has only a single trial pronoun, nanggula , which can be either 2nd or 3rd person. The trial may also be marked on verbs, such as in Lenakel . While the dual can be obligatory or facultative, according to Greville Corbett there are no known cases of an obligatory trial, so the trial might always be facultative. However, languages may have both a facultative dual and a facultative trial, like in Larike, or an obligatory dual and

2492-452: Is a combined five-way distinction of singular, dual, paucal, plural, and greater plural. Singular and plural have straightforward number agreements, whereas dual has dual pronouns but paucal articles, paucal has plural pronouns but paucal articles, and greater plural has greater plural pronouns but plural articles. The exact meaning of and terminology for the greater plural differs between languages. In some languages like Miya , it represents

2581-440: Is a hypothetical and controversial language macrofamily proposal that would include many language families historically spoken in northern, western, and southern Eurasia . The idea of a Eurasiatic superfamily dates back more than 100 years. Joseph Greenberg 's proposal, dating to the 1990s, is the most widely discussed version. In 2013, Mark Pagel and three colleagues published what they believe to be statistical evidence for

2670-435: Is a larger paucal category, for an inexactly numbered group that is larger in size than a smaller paucal. It can be found in the pronouns of the Austronesian language of Sursurunga , which exhibit a five-way distinction described as singular, dual, paucal, greater paucal, and plural. The Sursurunga paucal is used for smaller groups, usually of about three or four, or for nuclear families of any size. The Sursurunga greater paucal

2759-521: Is found particularly in the isolating languages of West Africa. One of the simplest number distinctions a language can make is singular and plural. Singular denotes exactly one referent, while plural denotes more than one referent. For example, in English: To mark number, English has different singular and plural forms for nouns and verbs (in the third person): "my dog watch es television" (singular) and "my dog s watch television" (plural). This

Parroquia - Misplaced Pages Continue

2848-533: Is generally assumed that semantic and phonetic corruption destroys any trace of original sound and meaning within 5,000 to 9,000 years making the application of comparative methods to ancient superfamilies highly questionable. Additionally, apparent cognates can arise by chance or from loan words . Without the existence of statistical estimates of chance collisions, conclusions based on comparison alone are thus viewed as doubtful. Stefan Georg and Alexander Vovin , who, unlike many of their colleagues, do not stipulate

2937-541: Is not a generally accepted proposal. Eurasiatic and another proposed macrofamily, Nostratic , often include many of the same language families. Vladislav Illich-Svitych 's Nostratic dictionary did not include the smaller Siberian language families listed in Eurasiatic, but this was only because protolanguages had not been reconstructed for them; Nostraticists have not attempted to exclude these languages from Nostratic. Many Nostratic theorists have accepted Eurasiatic as

3026-422: Is not universal: Wambaya marks number on nouns but not verbs, and Onondaga marks number on verbs but not nouns. Latin has different singular and plural forms for nouns, verbs, and adjectives, in contrast to English where adjectives do not change for number. Tundra Nenets can mark singular and plural on nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and postpositions . However, the most common part of speech to show

3115-447: Is obligatory for pronouns but facultative for nouns. In Comanche , it is obligatory when referring to humans, facultative for other animate nouns, and rarely used for inanimate nouns. There are also languages where use of the dual number is more restricted than singular and plural. In the possessive noun forms of Northern Sámi , the possessor can be in the dual number, but the noun possessed can only be singular or plural. Pronouns are

3204-419: Is rare for a language to mark the trial on nouns, and some sources even claim that trial marking on nouns does not exist. However, it has been recorded for a few languages; besides Awa, Arabana , Urama , and Angaataha have trial number. It is much more common for a language to have trial pronouns, the case for the Austronesian languages of Larike , Tolai , Raga , and Wamesa . A minimal example

3293-411: Is the case for Sanskrit , North Mansi , and Alutiiq . In languages with a facultative dual, two of something can be referred to using either the dual or the plural, and so plural means two or more. This is the case for modern Arabic dialects, at least some Inuktitut dialects, and Yandruwandha . In some languages, the dual is obligatory in certain cases but facultative in others. In Slovene , it

3382-417: Is this always the case. The Northern Gumuz paucal/plural may sometimes refer to "much greater than four". In some languages, the default form of a noun is not singular, but rather general, which does not specify number and could mean one or more than one. Singular and plural forms are marked from the general form. The general is used when the specific number is deemed irrelevant or unimportant. In this system,

3471-456: Is to categorize the apparent trial/quadral/quintal forms as "cardinal plurals", or forms of the grammatical plural number where the number of people is specified. Other authors have treated these concepts as perfectly equivalent, referring to pronoun numeral incorporation while still applying the terms quadral and quintal. There are also cases of sign language pronouns indicating specific numbers of referents above five. Ugandan Sign Language has

3560-611: Is used for groups of four or more (and must be used instead of the plural for a group of two or more dyads). There is thus some overlap between the two groups; a family of four can be referred to in Sursurunga by either of the paucals. This distinction is found both in Sursurunga's personal pronouns and in two different sets of possessive pronouns, one for edible things and one for non-edible things. The quadral number denotes exactly four items. Apparent examples of its use are almost entirely confined to pronouns, and specifically those in

3649-599: The Caucasus Mountains , and the Burushaski in the Hindu Kush Mountains) surrounded by Eurasiatic speakers. Dené–Caucasian survived in these areas because they were difficult to access and therefore easy to defend; the reasons for its survival elsewhere are unclear. Ruhlen argues that Eurasiatic is supported by stronger and clearer evidence than Dené–Caucasian, and that this also indicates that

Parroquia - Misplaced Pages Continue

3738-667: The Indo-European , Uralic , and Altaic (including Korean in his later papers) language families. Andreev also proposed 203 lexical roots for his hypothesized Boreal macrofamily. After Andreev's death in 1997, the Boreal hypothesis was further expanded by Sorin Paliga (2003, 2007). In 2013, Mark Pagel , Quentin D. Atkinson, Andreea S. Calude, and Andrew Meade published statistical evidence that attempts to overcome these objections. According to their earlier work, most words exhibit

3827-491: The Kartvelian and Dravidian families, as proposed by Pagel et al., in addition to the language isolates Nivkh , Etruscan and Greenberg's "Korean–Japanese–Ainu". Some proposals group Eurasiatic with even larger macrofamilies, such as Nostratic ; again, many other professional linguists regard the methods used as invalid. The hypothesis has fallen out of favour and has limited degrees of acceptance, predominantly among

3916-660: The Sorbian languages . Indo-European languages that have long ago lost the dual still sometimes have residual traces of it, such as the English distinctions both vs. all , either vs. any , and neither vs. none . The Norwegian både , cognate with English both , has further evolved to be able to refer to more than two items, as in både epler, pærer, og druer , literally "both apples, pears, and grapes." The trial number denotes exactly three items. For example, in Awa : It

4005-440: The 1950s to categorize the languages of Africa, to suggest a Eurasiatic language. In 2000, he expanded his argument for Eurasiatic into a full-length book, Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family , in which he outlines both phonetic and grammatical evidence that he feels demonstrate the validity of language family. The heart of his argument is 72 morphological features that he judges as common across

4094-457: The English sentences below: The quantity of apples is marked on the noun—"apple" singular number (one item) vs. "apples" plural number (more than one item)—on the demonstrative, that/those , and on the verb, is/are . In the second sentence, all this information is redundant , since quantity is already indicated by the numeral two . A language has grammatical number when its noun forms are subdivided into morphological classes according to

4183-472: The Kiwaian languages, but it is now recognized that many actually have a paucal instead. Linguist Michael Cysouw has suggested that most languages reported to have trials in fact have mislabelled paucals, and that true trials are very rare. On the other hand, Luise Hercus stated in her published grammar of Arabana that the language's trial (which can be marked on nouns) is a true trial which cannot act as

4272-458: The Melanesian pidgins of Tok Pisin, Bislama, and Pijin. However, while these are grammatically possible, they are rare, and plural forms are almost always used in their place. Many different sign languages have been explicitly described as having quadral pronoun forms. Estonian Sign Language has even been described as having the quadral for nouns. Marshallese has been said to have

4361-578: The Pagel list, she concludes it is impossible that such words could have retained any sound and meaning pairings from 15,000 years ago given how much they have changed in the 1,500 or so-year attested history of English. She also states that the authors are "looking in the wrong place" to begin with since "grammatical properties are more reliable than words as indicators of familial relationships". Pagel et al. also examined two other possible objections to their conclusions. They rule out linguistic borrowing as

4450-561: The accuracy of the LWED data on which the paper was based. She notes that LWED lists multiple possible proto-word reconstructions for most words, increasing the possibility of chance matches. Pagel et al. anticipated this criticism and state that since infrequently used words generally have more proposed reconstructions, such errors should "produce a bias in the opposite direction" of what the statistics actually show (i.e. that infrequently used words should have larger cognate groups if chance alone

4539-506: The dual can only be used by an adult male speaking to another adult male. Dual number existed in all nouns and adjectives of Proto-Indo-European around 4000 BCE, and was inherited in some form in many of its prehistoric , protohistoric , ancient , and medieval descendents. Only rarely has it persisted in Indo-European languages to the modern day. It survived in Proto-Germanic in the first and second person pronouns, where it

SECTION 50

#1732771776869

4628-491: The existence of multiple plural categories may blur the line between paucal and plural. For example, Mele-Fila is said to have a paucal, plural, and greater plural. However, the transition between plural and greater plural occurs around 15 to 20. This puts the Mele-Fila "plural" in range of some larger "paucals" described in other languages. Thus the distinction is muddied between a system of paucal, plural, greater plural, and

4717-496: The first point, they argue that inaccurate reconstructions should weaken, not enhance, the signals. On the second, they argue that chance resemblances should be equally common across all word usage frequencies, in contrast to what the data shows. The team then created a Markov chain Monte Carlo simulation to estimate and date the phylogenetic trees of the seven language families under examination. Five separate runs produced

4806-453: The following countries: This article about a political term is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Grammatical number The word "number" is also used in linguistics to describe the distinction between certain grammatical aspects that indicate the number of times an event occurs, such as the semelfactive aspect, the iterative aspect, etc. For that use of the term, see " Grammatical aspect ". Most languages of

4895-594: The geographical distribution of Eurasiatic shows that it and the Dené–Caucasian family are the result of separate migrations. Dené–Caucasian is the older of the two groups, with the emergence of Eurasiatic being more recent. The Eurasiatic expansion overwhelmed Dené–Caucasian, leaving speakers of the latter restricted mainly to isolated pockets (the Basques in the Pyrenees Mountains , Caucasian peoples in

4984-572: The global plural, the remote plural, the plural of abundance, the unlimited plural, and the superplural. For example, in Tswana : The greater plural may also be a component of larger number systems. Nouns in Barngarla have a four-way distinction of singular, dual, plural, and greater plural. The same four-way distinction is found in Mokilese pronouns, where a former trial has evolved to become

5073-401: The greater plural exists only in nouns and not pronouns. Oppositely, Mokilese has the greater plural in pronouns but not nouns. Chamacoco has the greater plural only in first person inclusive pronouns, second person pronouns, and first person inclusive verb inflections. Tigre has the greater plural only in a single word, nälät , which means a large number of deer. Greatest plural is

5162-425: The grounds that a Russian noun cannot be declined to stand by itself and mean anywhere between 2 and 4. Similar constructions can be found in other Slavic languages , including Polish , Serbo-Croatian , and Slovene. Because Slovene also has a regular dual, there is a four-way distinction of nouns being singular with 1, dual with 2, plural with 3 or 4, and genitive plural with 5 or more. The greater paucal number

5251-459: The groups now called Uralic and Eskimo–Aleut as early as 1818, but it can also be found in Tungusic, Nivkh (also called Gilyak) and Chukchi–Kamchatkan—all of which Greenberg placed in Eurasiatic. According to Ruhlen, this pattern is not found in language families or languages outside Eurasiatic. In 1998, Joseph Greenberg extended his work in mass comparison , a methodology he first proposed in

5340-575: The highland Lepoʼ Sawa dialect spoken in Long Anap . There seems to be no other published sources of info on this dialect's pronouns, and an investigation into the lowland Lebo’ Vo’ dialect has revealed a paucal instead of a quadral. A quadral claim has also been made for the animate demonstrative pronouns in Nauruan . Outside the Austronesian family, Abun storytelling reportedly frequently contains quadral pronouns in addition to trial ones. Perhaps

5429-467: The lack of grammatical number with an extensive system of measure words . Joseph Greenberg has proposed a number category hierarchy as a linguistic universal : "No language has a trial number unless it has a dual. No language has a dual unless it has a plural." This hierarchy does not account for the paucal. Obligatory plural marking of all nouns is found throughout the languages of western and northern Eurasia and most parts of Africa . The rest of

SECTION 60

#1732771776869

5518-639: The language family that Eurasiatic is most closely connected to is Amerind . He states that "the Eurasiatic-Amerind family represents a relatively recent expansion (circa 15,000 years ago) into territory opened up by the melting of the Arctic ice cap". In contrast, "Eurasiatic-Amerind stands apart from the other families of the Old World, among which the differences are much greater and represent deeper chronological groupings". Like Eurasiatic, Amerind

5607-437: The languages of Oceania or in sign languages . It has been contested whether the quadral truly exists in natural language; some linguists have rejected it as an extant category, while others have accepted it. Some languages that have previously been described as having a quadral, like Sursurunga, have since been reanalyzed as having a paucal instead. Like trial forms, quadral forms of pronouns have been said to be attested in

5696-1027: The languages spoken in most of Europe , Central and Northern Asia and (in the case of Eskimo-Aleut) on either side of the Bering Strait . The branching of Eurasiatic is roughly (following Greenberg): A computational phylogenetic analysis by Jäger (2015) provided the following phylogeny of language families in Eurasia: Yeniseian Dravidian Nakh-Daghestanian Austroasiatic Japonic Ainu Sino-Tibetan Hmong-Mien Austronesian Tai-Kadai Tungusic Mongolic Turkic Yukaghir Nivkh Uralic Chukotko-Kamchatkan Indo-European Merritt Ruhlen suggests that

5785-458: The list (e.g., bark and ashes ), thus casting doubt on bias being the cause of the apparent cognates. Thomason says she is "unqualified" to comment on the statistics themselves, but says any model that uses bad data as input cannot provide reliable results. Asya Pereltsvaig takes a different approach to her critique of the paper. Outlining the history (in English) of several of the words on

5874-504: The near concomitant spread of the language families that comprise this group to the retreat of glaciers in Eurasia at the end of the last ice age ~15,000 years ago." Many academics specializing in historical linguistics via the comparative method are, however, skeptical of the conclusions of the paper, and critical of its assumptions and methodology. Writing on University of Pennsylvania blog Language Log , Sarah Thomason questions

5963-433: The only known spoken language outside Oceania to have a claimed quadral is Apinayé of Brazil, recorded as having a third person pronominal prefix meaning "they four", although this has been little researched or described. In some Austronesian languages with a singular/dual/trial/plural pronoun system, the plural forms are etymologically related to the number four. This has led to suggestions or assertions that historically

6052-457: The only part of speech with a dual form in some Polynesian languages , including Samoan , Tuvaluan , and Māori . In Maltese , the dual only exists for about 30 specific nouns, of which it is obligatory for only 8 (hour, day, week, month, year, once, hundred, and thousand). Words that can take a facultative dual in Maltese include egg, branch, tear, and wicker basket. In Mezquital Otomi ,

6141-649: The paucal in Avar). Takivatan Bunun has a paucal only in its distal demonstratives used in reference to people. It is common for former trials to evolve in meaning to become paucals, and many Austronesian languages have paucal markers that are etymologically derived from the numeral three, indicating the old usage. It is less common for duals to evolve into paucals, but this has been observed in some dialects of Arabic. Paucals that are etymologically trials are sometimes incorrectly described as being trials. For example, trial pronouns were once described as being found in all

6230-418: The primary factor for using the paucal is not a specific number range, but the referents forming a single group; although the paucal is most common between 3 and 5, it has been used with more than 20. In Paamese , a major factor is relative group size compared to the plural, such that even though the paucal generally means 12 or fewer, a group of 2,000 people may be referred to in the paucal when contrasted with

6319-870: The pronouns in Mussau and Lihir have dual, trial, and paucal. The lower bound of the paucal is usually defined by what other number categories exist in the language. In singular/paucal/plural paradigms, use of the paucal begins at two, but with the addition of the dual, the paucal begins at three. There is usually no exact upper bound on how many paucal refers to, and its approximate range depends on both language and context. It has been recorded as going up to about 5 in Warndarrang , about 6 in Baiso , 10 in Arabic, and about 10 or 15 in Murrinh-patha . In Manam ,

6408-415: The quadral as a regular feature in its pronoun system. While the apparent Marshallese quadral can mean exactly four, it also has an alternate rhetorical use in speeches to larger groups in order to impart a sense of individual intimacy. According to Greville Corbett , this means it is better classified as a paucal. However, there is not consensus that this alternate use means Marshallese does not truly have

6497-761: The quantity they express, such that: This is partly true for English: every noun and pronoun form is singular or plural (a few, such as " fish ", " cannon " and " you ", can be either, according to context). Some modifiers of nouns—namely the demonstrative determiners—and finite verbs inflect to agree with the number of the noun forms they modify or have as subject: this car and these cars are correct, while * this cars and * these car are incorrect. However, adjectives do not inflect for and many verb forms do not distinguish between singular and plural ("She/They went", "She/They can go", "She/They had gone", "She/They will go"). Many languages distinguish between count nouns and mass nouns . Only count nouns can be freely used in

6586-525: The range of possible numbers into different sections. One low cut defines paucal and plural, and one high cut defines plural and greater plural. Two low cuts define paucal, greater paucal, and plural; one low cut and one high cut define paucal, plural, and greater plural; and two high cuts define plural, greater plural, and greatest plural. There does not appear to be any language with three such cuts, and so no language with three paucal categories and an "even greater paucal". Because they are inexactly defined,

6675-420: The same (unrooted) tree, with three sets of language families: an eastern grouping of Altaic, Inuit–Yupik, and Chukchi–Kamchatkan; a central and southern Asia grouping of Kartvelian and Dravidian; and a northern and western European grouping of Indo-European and Uralic. Two rootings were considered, using established age estimates for Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Chukchi–Kamchatkan as calibration. The first roots

6764-504: The second person pronouns yutufala (dual) and yutrifala (trial). These forms theoretically have no specific limit, but in practicality usually stop at three. Sign languages described as having a quintal in addition to the quadral include American Sign Language , Argentine Sign Language , British Sign Language , German Sign Language , Levantine Arabic Sign Language , and Ugandan Sign Language . The validity has been debated of categorizing sign language pronouns as having

6853-566: The singular and in the plural. Mass nouns, like "milk", "gold", and "furniture", are normally invariant. (In some cases, a normally mass noun X may be used as a count noun to collect several distinct kinds of X into an enumerable group; for example, a cheesemaker might speak of goat, sheep, and cow milk as milks .) Not all languages have number as a grammatical category. In those that do not, quantity must be expressed either directly, with numerals , or indirectly, through optional quantifiers . However, many of these languages compensate for

6942-733: The singular is often called the singulative, to distinguish it as derived from a different form. Similarly, the plural derived from the general has been called the plurative. For example, in Pular : However, some languages only have a two-way difference between general and plurative, like in Japanese : Less common is a two-way distinction between general and singulative. No language has this as its default number contrast, although some languages have specific nouns with this distinction. For example, in Sidama : Eurasiatic languages Eurasiatic

7031-414: The spread of Dené–Caucasian occurred before that of Eurasiatic. The existence of a Dené–Caucasian family is disputed or rejected by most linguists, including Lyle Campbell , Ives Goddard , and Larry Trask . The last common ancestor of the family was estimated by phylogenetic analysis of ultraconserved words at roughly 15,000 years old, suggesting that these languages spread from a "refuge" area at

7120-569: The storytelling of Abun , a possible language isolate. In the Solomon Islands, trial pronouns are used very frequently in Touo , either a Central Solomon language or a language isolate. As a result, bilingual speakers of Touo and Pijin will use trial pronouns a lot more commonly in Pijin than other speakers, for whom the trial is usually a lot less common than the dual. A very rare example of

7209-469: The tree to the midpoint of the branch leading to proto-Dravidian and yields an estimated origin for Eurasiatic of 14450 ± 1750 years ago. The second roots the tree to the proto-Kartvelian branch and yields 15610 ± 2290 years ago. Internal nodes have less certainty, but exceed chance expectations, and do not affect the top-level age estimate. The authors conclude "All inferred ages must be treated with caution but our estimates are consistent with proposals linking

7298-537: The use of markers higher than the dual not being obligatory, with replacement by the plural being acceptable. There was not enough data available to McBurney to argue whether or not these reasons equally applied to other sign languages. Linguist Raquel Veiga Busto has argued they do not equally apply to Catalan Sign Language , and has applied the terms quadral and quintal to the language's pronouns for convenience without taking an official stance as to whether they are grammatical number or numeral incorporation. A third model

7387-429: The various language families he examines. Of the many variant proposals, Greenberg's has attracted the most academic attention. Greenberg's Eurasiatic hypothesis has been dismissed by many linguists, often on the ground that his research on mass comparison is unreliable. The primary criticism of comparative methods is that cognates are assumed to have a common origin on the basis of similar sounds and word meanings. It

7476-446: The word. Among the 188 words, cognate groups ranged from 1 (no cognates) to 7 (all languages cognate) with a mean of 2.3 ± 1.1. The distribution of cognate class size was positively skewed − many more small groups than large ones − as predicted by their hypothesis of variant decay rates. Words were then grouped by their generalized worldwide frequency of use, part of speech, and previously estimated rate of replacement. Cognate class size

7565-464: The world have formal means to express differences of number. One widespread distinction, found in English and many other languages, involves a simple two-way contrast between singular and plural number ( car / cars , child / children , etc.). Discussion of other more elaborate systems of number appears below. Grammatical number is a morphological category characterized by the expression of quantity through inflection or agreement. As an example, consider

7654-695: The world's languages present a heterogeneous picture. Optional plural marking is common in Southeast and East Asia and Australian languages , and complete lack of plural marking is particularly found in New Guinea and Australian languages. In addition to the areal correlations , there also seems to be at least one correlation with morphological typology : isolating languages appear to favor no or non-obligatory plural marking. This can be seen particularly in Africa, where optionality or absence of plural marking

7743-944: Was positively correlated with estimated replacement rate ( r =0.43, p <0.001). Generalized frequency combined with part of speech was also a strong predictor of class size (r=0.48, p<0.001). Pagel et al. conclude "This result suggests that, consistent with their short estimated half-lives, infrequently used words typically do not exist long enough to be deeply ancestral, but that above the threshold frequency words gain greater stability, which then translates into larger cognate class sizes." Twenty-three word meanings had cognate class sizes of four or more. Words used more than once per 1,000 spoken words ( χ =24.29, P<0.001), pronouns (χ =26.1, P<0.0001), and adverbs (χ =14.5, P=0.003) were over-representing among those 23 words. Frequently used words, controlled for part of speech, were 7.5 times more likely (P<0.001) than infrequently used words to be judged as cognate. These findings matched their

7832-678: Was the source). Thomason also argues that since the LWED is contributed to primarily by believers in Nostratic , a proposed superfamily even broader than Eurasiatic, the data is likely to be biased towards proto-words that can be judged cognate. Pagel et al. admit they "cannot rule out this bias", but say they think it is unlikely that bias has systematically impacted their results. They argue certain word types generally believed to be long lived (e.g., numbers) do not appear on their 23 word list, while other words of relatively low importance in modern society, but important to ancient people, do appear on

7921-573: Was then inherited by Old English , Old High German , Old Low German , Early Old Swedish , Old Norwegian , Old Icelandic , and Gothic . It continued in Icelandic until the 1700s, some dialects of Faroese until at least the late 1800s, and some dialects of North Frisian through the 1900s. From Proto-Greek it entered Ancient Greek , and from Proto-Indo-Iranian it entered Sanskrit. From Proto-Slavic , it still exists today in Slovene and

#868131