* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
LINGUIST List logo Eastern Michigan University Wayne State University *
* People & Organizations * Jobs * Calls & Conferences * Publications * Language Resources * Text & Computer Tools * Teaching & Learning * Mailing Lists * Search *
* *
 

Ask-A-Linguist - Message details
Subject: Limit of tones, cases, gender, plural
Question:
I have been told that Cantonese has 6 (or 9) tones, Finnish has 16 cases, Swahili has 8 genders, and Russian has singular, plural and REALLY plural. Those are very surprising (to me, at least), but I'm sure that there's more. What's the limit of these sorts of differences in language expression and what are some other examples? Thank you for your time and consideration.

Reply:
To Professor Cruz-Ferreira's recommendation and Professor Stahlke's extensive discussion, I'll add only a couple of things.

Another "proliferation" many don't notice because they confuse it with "time" is tenses. English, German, and the other Germanic languages have only two: past tense sang and the nonpast (commonly but misleadingly called "present")
sings. The Slavic languages in general also have only two tenses, past and non-past. intertwined with a system of perfective and imperfective aspect.

But most of the Romance languages have several tenses: Spanish for instance has at least five, and some dialects six that I can think of right off the bat (and probably a couple of more I can't at 0300 hours). And that's only in the indicative mood. Standard Castillian has not only a future tense and a conditional tense (sort of the "past of the future") in the indicative mode, but has also a future tense in the subjunctive mode. It has two past tenses in the subjunctive mode -- canta'se, canta'ra, these being largely but not entirely interchangeable. In some dialect the latter -ra form is not a subjunctive but a pluperfect indicative, so those dialects then have a true pluperfect tense.

Rumanian also has this -s past tense, inherited from Mother Latin, thus: c^nta-se 'had sung'. Like Spanish, it also has a present, and the Oltenian dialect has not only an iterative past tense but also a true preterite tense. Moreover, Rumanian also has a true (non phrasal) pluperfect (past perfect) tense, ci^nta-s-e 'had sung'. But it has lost the future tense completely. Future time is now "expressed" in Dacorumanian with an auxiliarifaction of the old verb velle 'want', thus va c^inta , 'want sing'. But there is another future "expression" and indeed the only one in Arumanian, is the typical Balkan formation of future time reference with a nonvarying va 'wants' and the subordinate particla sa^ and the subjunctive present of the verb:
va sa^ ci"nte.

Sooooo, you characterized such things as multiple genders and cases as " these sorts of differences in language expression " and that's exactly what they are. Different languages can say about anything but they may use different kinds of constructions to say them. A language can lose one way of expressing relations between parts of sentences and conversations but another different one arises that does the job. One advantage -- if it is an advantage -- of inflected case, tense, and person systems is that a language with them may be able to say in fewer, though often longer, words what a language without them may require more words for. Another example is person. English and many many other languages have three: 1st, speaker, 2nd, speakee, 3rd, a 3rd party spoken about. But Blackfoot and Algonquin languages in general have a 4th and a 5th person. So verb forms alone can indicate 3 separate third parties. These are often called the obviative, subobviative, subordinative.
In English we can disambiguate several third parties but we have to do it with circumlocutions or added qualifing forms, like

He, Tom, said he, Dick, would come with him, Harry.

Note how the English pronominal gender does the same thing:
He, Tom, said he, Dick, would come with her.

We know the fifth party is distinct from the third and fourth because there is a gender switch. Makes one start to envy Zulu with its 14 or 15 genders.

U of Cincinnati
Dept of Anthropology

Reply From: Joseph F Foster    click here to access email
Date: Sep-10-2009
Other Replies:
  1. Re: Limit of tones, cases, gender, plural Madalena Cruz-Ferreira    (Sep-10-2009)
  2. Re: Limit of tones, cases, gender, plural Herbert Frederic Stahlke    (Sep-10-2009)
  3. Re: Limit of tones, cases, gender, plural Elizabeth J Pyatt    (Sep-10-2009)
Back to Most Recent Questions
Page Updated: 27-Nov-2009

Please report any bad links or misclassified data

LINGUIST Homepage | Read LINGUIST | Contact us

NSF Logo

While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed
on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents.