Why no Quadral?

Started by eanayo, April 28, 2010, 03:10:47 AM

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eanayo

Kaltxì, ma smuk!

So, I've been thinking about this thing that's been bugging me since I picked my forum name:

In contrast to Earth, quite a lot of things in Pandoran fauna occur naturally in groups of four (eyes, wings, arms, forelegs...), either as two pairs (say Ikran eyes, one pair of big ones, another pair of smaller ones) or four equal elements (forelegs).
Admittedly, I am not a linguist and don't know too much about language development, but I would expect Na'vi to reflect this fact, and have a Quadral number for things that come natural in groups of four.

So you'd have something like:
menari tawtuteyä - refers to the eyes (all two of them) of a human.
*tsìnari ikranä - refers to the eyes (all four of them) of an ikran.
or *memenari ikranä - refers to the eyes (the two pairs of them) of an ikran.

What do you say about this? Am I completely off or are my thoughts reasonable? Discuss!

By the way, apologies if this doesn't really fit the intermediate forum, but I figured most of the real linguists (and people with more feeling for language) hang around here ;)

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srake tsun pivlltxe san [ˈɔaχkat͡slʃwɔaf]?

kewnya txamew'itan

Because ay+ is effectively a quadral and above.

If we think back to before the na'vi even had words for the numbers up to sixteen and there were just numbers up to four.

It seems likely to me that these proto-numbers of one to a handful (four) manifested themselves as the numerical prefixes we have.

In this system we get an approximate system like:

me+ two
pxe+ three
ay+ four

although, these would probably be an approximate system like in some primitive amazonian tribes and they wouldn't actually be those numbers exactly and would probably be closer to:

me+ few
pxe+ several
ay+ many

Once the na'vi developed more numbers this formalises into:

me+ two
pxe+ three
ay+ many

so the ay+ is possibly primarily a quadral that has been adapted to be used as a generic plural.

Hence the eyes of an ikran would be aynari ikranä and the arms of the viperwolf (assuming na'vi distinguish between viperwolf arms and legs) would be aypun nantangä.
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wm.annis

Quote from: Aysyal on April 28, 2010, 03:10:47 AMIn contrast to Earth, quite a lot of things in Pandoran fauna occur naturally in groups of four (eyes, wings, arms, forelegs...), either as two pairs (say Ikran eyes, one pair of big ones, another pair of smaller ones) or four equal elements (forelegs).
Admittedly, I am not a linguist and don't know too much about language development, but I would expect Na'vi to reflect this fact, and have a Quadral number for things that come natural in groups of four.

Well, there really isn't a reason to expect this, even if groups of four occur commonly in Pandoran wildlife.  I mean, lots of things come in pairs for Earthlings of all sorts, but only some human languages have a dual and those that do historically tend to lose them.  Even Old English had dual pronouns for the first and second person pronouns.  And other Human languages don't mark plurals of any sort at all.

What a language grabs onto as important doesn't necessarily relate to importance in the outside world.  What one language might consider vital is completely absent from other languages.  Languages follow their own rules, and so long as they remain useful to people all sorts of craziness can be added (or deleted) without apparent detriment to the people using the language.  That's why the Earth has about 6000 Human languages of astonishing variety.

eanayo

#3
Ma kemeoauniaea,

Yes, it seems reasonable that the "strict" numbers may have developed from something less tangible (as you said, "few", "several", "many"), but why would "several" be fixed to three, when four would be so much more useful? Granted, it wouldn't make much sense to have a Quadral, but no Trial. *pours some Port and gets into the comfy philosopher's armchair*

Quote from: wm.annis on April 28, 2010, 11:58:46 AM
I mean, lots of things come in pairs for Earthlings of all sorts, but only some human languages have a dual and those that do historically tend to lose them.  Even Old English had dual pronouns for the first and second person pronouns.  And other Human languages don't mark plurals of any sort at all.
What a language grabs onto as important doesn't necessarily relate to importance in the outside world.
Yes, I understand that language does not necessarily depend on the environment it's used in. But now you made me curious! My idea (complete layman, mind you!) of why Duals exist(ed) was the ability to specifically refer to pairs, which are fairly common in nature (for those languages which found it important enough). Is that it, or what's the history behind them (or grammatical number in general)? Some vestige of a primitive counting system, that got less and less important as "real" numbers developed? Curious... *heads for more Port*

Quote
Languages follow their own rules, and so long as they remain useful to people all sorts of craziness can be added (or deleted) without apparent detriment to the people using the language.  That's why the Earth has about 6000 Human languages of astonishing variety.
Truth. And if weren't for that movie, I'd still be not at all interested in languages and completely oblivious of the diversity they show.

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srake tsun pivlltxe san [ˈɔaχkat͡slʃwɔaf]?

kewnya txamew'itan

1. You answered your own question.  ;) "it wouldn't make much sense to have a quadral but not trial", and as annis says, a huge number of things come in pairs in western Europe but English has no dual.

3. Same here.  :D
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'eylan na'viyä

how about pxe- meaning 3 or 4 depending on context?
most things that come on 4 do not come in 3 and most things that come on 3 do not come in 4. In cases where it is ambiguous it means only 3 again. like if pxe- is a full hand, but sometimes you would count the thumb and sometimes not, depending on the situation. ;)

Tsamsiyu92

I dont think we need

Tsoe, mrroe, puoe, kioe, voloe

But how do you say "the four of us are hunting..." for instance?

kewnya txamew'itan

Quote from: 'eylan na'viyä on April 28, 2010, 06:05:29 PM
how about pxe- meaning 3 or 4 depending on context?
most things that come on 4 do not come in 3 and most things that come on 3 do not come in 4. In cases where it is ambiguous it means only 3 again. like if pxe- is a full hand, but sometimes you would count the thumb and sometimes not, depending on the situation. ;)

It could have worked but certainly isn't possible in 'modern' na'vi where Frommer has given it to us as a solid trial.

Quote from: Tsamsiyu92 on April 29, 2010, 04:06:25 AM
But how do you say "the four of us are hunting..." for instance?

oe atsìng teraron

(I believe somewhere there was an email from Frommer that I can't find now that said you could drop the plural ay+ if specifying the number exactly, if I'm imagining it (quite possible) it would be ay atsìng teraron)
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Tsamsiyu92

^Oe ngaru irayo seiyi, ma 'eylan.

eanayo

Quote from: Tsamsiyu92 on April 29, 2010, 04:06:25 AM
Tsoe, mrroe, puoe, kioe, voloe

As I said in the OP, I brought up four or two times two for a very specific reason, not because I find arbitrary grammatical numbers fun :)
Although, with the (in my eyes) very weak inflection for numbers (uuuuh! A prefix derived from numerals for nouns and pronouns. How scary!) it wouldn't be a problem to support an insanely high amount of grammatical numbers :P

Quote
It could have worked but certainly isn't possible in 'modern' na'vi where Frommer has given it to us as a solid trial.
Plus, the prefixes for number are closely related to the actual numerals, so it would look odd, at least. But I like the general idea, it sounds "fun" (try to teach that, high school English teachers!) ;)

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srake tsun pivlltxe san [ˈɔaχkat͡slʃwɔaf]?

'eylan na'viyä

Quote from: Aysyal on April 29, 2010, 03:49:11 PM
Quote
It could have worked but certainly isn't possible in 'modern' na'vi where Frommer has given it to us as a solid trial.
Plus, the prefixes for number are closely related to the actual numerals, so it would look odd, at least. But I like the general idea, it sounds "fun" (try to teach that, high school English teachers!) ;)
i dont think that it would be odd if pxe- does not always exactly mean 3. eg: sometimes a "dozen" is used to describe an amount that is not necessarily exactly 12.

kewnya txamew'itan

But "dozen" like "score" and "myriad" has fallen out of use as a specific number whereas na'vi doesn't (as far as we know) have any archaic numbers like this that could still be around approximately.
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