[110910] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: [tlhIngan Hol] The grammatical number of NOUN + 'ar
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (De'vID)
Sat Sep 9 04:41:18 2017
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From: "De'vID" <de.vid.jonpin@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2017 17:01:18 +0200
To: tlhIngan-Hol <tlhingan-hol@kli.org>
Reply-To: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
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On 8 September 2017 at 16:42, Felix Malmenbeck <felixm@kth.se> wrote:
>> I don't understand. If you don't know how many of something there is,
>> how could you know whether it was singular or plural?
>
> Well, in English, we (usually) treat "how many NOUN:s" as grammatically plural:
>
> "How many people have seen it?" (not "How many person has seen it?")
> "How many are there?" (not "How many is there?")
>
> Presumably, Klingon has some similar rule, or at least a rule-of-thumb for how to deal with this uncertainty.
Based on the "no plural suffix" rule, I would assume that the rule is
to treat it as singular, but it's not explicitly stated.
--
De'vID
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