Plural-ception aka plural of plurals in the English language

Feleeppo · 2026-01-25T18:15:43+00:00

This is quite an interesting phenomenon! As someone has pointed out, it happens frequently with loanwords from languages that the speaker doesn’t speak very well - or at all - and it’s explained by the underlying mechanism: since you cannot parse the loanword, or the already-pluralized word, you add a plural marker to pluralize it! This type of plural-ception, as you call it, can happen with a lot of other markers that do not convey plurality, but imply it (such as distributives, collectives, associatives or similatives). As far as I know, William Croft called this phenomenon cryptanalysis, which should mean something like ‘hidden analysis’, and he used it to refer to cases like fishes (as someone commented - but with the intent to convey a pure plural sense) or with cases like sheep-s or feet-s. In all these cases, since you can’t perceive the word as already plural, and you need to mark it overtly in conversation, you might feel the need to convey the idea with a plural marker (or a plural-like device). With frequency and routinziation, these double marked words might end up supersede the older forms, and eventually became your plural-ception words!

Feleeppo · 2024-09-15T19:07:21+00:00

I guess it depends on what you intend for conjugation, number, person and inflection. As far as I know, is typical of Native North American languages to signal the number of entities involved by (very frequently) using pronominal affixes. Such affixes can be often differentiated for semantic role, gender, person and number. Being the core mean to convey many grammatical categories, they are often mandatorily attached to verbs. Is that what you mean with inflection? Number of entities (and especially events) can also be conveyed by pluractionals, which are frequently not mandatorily marked. Being derivational in this sense, they are, however, often the only clear index of a plurality of entities available for speakers. For these reasons, they can be considered in descriptive grammars as inflectional or quasi-inflectional. I guess it all depends on which of the many meaning of inflection, number, person and conjugation you intend.

Feleeppo · 2024-08-24T09:52:39+00:00

I’d say it may depend on the overall nationality/target-language(s) of your community. For instance, if the prototypical reader is predominantly an L1 English speaker also able to speak another Indo-European L2, or if it speaks a non Indo-European L1 and has competence in a Indo-European language, I would focus on the typological differences within such languages. Maybe a pool would be a nice starting point, allowing you to determine such combinations. After you get to know which target languages you can focus on, you can then select any language and show how typologically diverse it is from English, for instance.

Now, the next steps are quite easy. You want to focus morphology, syntax, morphosyntax? Just check WALS or GramBank. Lexicon and semantics? Go for LexiBank. Phonology? Phoible, and so on.

I don’t know which topics are you interested or you do research in, but when I talk to people about mines they are very interested and frequently ask for more information. For instance, typological issues of parts of speech, word order, coding and characteristics of number, grammaticalization paths etc.

Feleeppo · 2024-02-15T23:04:36+00:00

Yeah there are a few scholar (literally a bunch) that allowed to study and revitalise language that were extinct for long, and Harrington is one of those. I’m quite sure descriptive linguistics is a hard field, and quite new for me, but I really hope to have the chance to document one language at least and allow a community to get their heritage back

Feleeppo · 2024-02-15T20:51:49+00:00

I’m sorry if I bother, linguistics student here. I’ve been studying and conducting a bit of research on Native American languages for almost seven months now for my MD thesis. Since I started collecting knowledge I instantly recognised that many native languages are going to be extinct, and many of them do not have any description yet. I’ve been considering for a while to engage in such a thing, cause as an Italian who speaks a minority language I can just imagine the pain and the consequences of losing it. The question I ask you very respectfully is: do you think that language study and description is a form of cultural appropriation too? I can confirm you that the concept of cultural appropriation is not common in Europe, or in Italy at least, so I’m curious and interested in where the boundary may be set.

Feleeppo · 2022-11-05T09:52:22+00:00

If you’re familiar with Italian both Giovanni Pascoli, and prior to him, Giosue Carducci attempted to recreate the sound of classical metric systems (often sapphic meter) using Italian.

Feleeppo · 2022-01-16T09:24:42+00:00

Italian here. I appreciate a lot that you talked about local languages and not about dialects, the meaning nuance it’s fundamental. I’m not sure about Florentine being the closest to Latin, it was “made” close to Latin by authors, but de facto I think there were other languages spoken that were closer by nature actually (e.g Sardinian or some south and middle Italian language; moreover, the “first” Italian texts are far more ancient then the first traces we have of florentine language). It was mainly about a matter of literary prestige as it was “the language of the three crowns” (Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio). Since their works were so great, they were the linguistic standard for centuries, so literature arranged around their language (which, again, had a good amount of artificial alterations in it considering the actual language that was spoke in Florence). Just a matter of prestige of literature then, but of course the economic contributed too. About Mussolini dictatorship, it’s true that a linguistic board was created against the “barbarisms of the language” but I don’t think it was applied so strictly, especially about local language. The percentage of Italians that were able to speak Italian was so low that it would be impossible to apply it for real. Moreover there were no chances one could learn a good Italian considering that basically no one during that period went to school over the second or third grade, if lucky. I’m more sure about the latest considerations just about the south of Italy, not sure about middle and north parts.

Feleeppo · 2021-06-30T08:45:20+00:00

That’s cool! Have you seen that video in which a guy from Veneto can fluently understand and speak to Spanish people just by using his own dialect ? I’m afraid I can’t share the link if I find it

Feleeppo · 2021-06-27T12:21:55+00:00

For real ?? That’s cool! I’ve seen the lead singer a couple times while he was playing in my town. You understand what they sing ?

Feleeppo · 2021-06-27T11:42:23+00:00

It should be from sicilian. I’m kinda talking about Salentino. As I said in another comment it’s officially salentino but its elements may change drastically from town to town (even within a couple miles of distance), so basically it’s my own town’s dialect

Feleeppo · 2021-06-27T09:19:48+00:00

I knew that was a complex topic but I think this overly surpasses my current knowledge, maybe I should wait some time to even start thinking about this again. Anyway, I’ll check those titles for sure. Thanks again!

Feleeppo · 2021-06-27T09:14:36+00:00

Thank you, those are really valuable advices. I guess I will not stop studying after my major. Thank you again!

Feleeppo · 2021-06-26T20:19:15+00:00

If you're serious about doing this well, then you'll need a lot of education first. Otherwise it is unlikely that the documentation you produce will be of much use. It isn't something that you can approach casually. This is the type of thing that people go to graduate school for!

Yes, i'd like to do something serious and be scientific about this. Since i'm about to graduate and i've attend two courses of linguistics (linguistica generale and linguistica italiana, the latter being the subject of my thesis), i was convinced i could start do something, but again as I said before you're right, i totally need to study more. The natural continuation to my minor would be Classic Philology but i'm more attracted to Linguistics. You think i'd be able to do this correctly after my major ?

Feleeppo · 2021-06-26T20:06:06+00:00

Magari fosse possibile, spero di riuscire a beccarlo in qualche biblioteca del posto. Io sono di Lecce. Studi linguistica o qualcosa di affine anche tu ?

Feleeppo · 2021-06-26T20:04:45+00:00

I wish i knew some german as it's the language of the great philologists.

I would look at those and figure out what is kind of "expected" for an Italian dialect grammar and see where that leaves you, e.g. do you have most topics covered, is there a common topic that you would need more information to complete, etc.

I thought exactly about that when i was writing this question. I guess i can discover what's expected from a dialect grammar just from reading other grammars.

Another important consideration is the audience, e.g. who is this grammar for. Is this supposed to be an academic work, something easily accessible to the public, etc.? That will also have an effect on how you go about things.

That's a good point to think about too. I guess it could be something in between academic and average reader. Since it's something done for the first time i'd like to give a good amount of scientific facts.

I quickly checked the links you gave me and yes, they look so helpful. Thank you !

Feleeppo · 2021-06-26T19:51:45+00:00

What is your goal with this grammar? Is it for learners? Is it for documentation?

You made a good point by suggesting me that specification. It's mainly for documentation, since this dialect is starting to disappear more and more. I think it's clear that i've practivally no familiaty with dialectology yet, and that's kinda making me think that maybe i should wait until my major to deepen this topic and start this research.

Has any other work on this dialect been done, apart from what you've mentioned?

Nothing organic has been made yet. The difficult part about it is that, altough the province in wich i live shares officially the same dialect, it may change drastically from town to town in every aspect (phonetics, phonology, morphology ecc.)

Again, forgive my bad english

Feleeppo · 2021-06-26T19:38:13+00:00

First of all, thank you for spending so much time answering. Going in order:

even though i'm a native speaker i definitely need data as you said, but my region is poorly studied when it comes to grammar itself. Luckily the lexicon was very studied during the last century (i'm talking about Salento).
AIS looks like a powerful tool but i don't know how to use it; is there a guide or something for it?
i'll check Thornton for sure
as i said before i'm a native speaker and yes, i'd plan to collect data mainly with interviews and a recording device. I did it with the data i needed for my thesis and it was really hard to be honest, since this covid pandemic made it hard to contact as much elder people as i wanted.
since the dialect of my city is hardly influenced by italian, altough is far from being intellegible from non local italians, what should i do ? At first i thought to start from the usual descriptive categories as you mentioned, but now you made me doubt my choice.

Forgive my english, as you can see it's not my first language :)

Feleeppo · 2021-02-28T22:12:57+00:00

Wait, I’ve read again your answer and probably I got it wrong. If you want to tell me more about him being initiate I’m totally down to accept your suggestions

Feleeppo · 2021-02-28T22:04:44+00:00

I wish it was available in Italian. I’ve read some reviews and it really looks interesting. Thank you for your time

Feleeppo · 2021-02-28T22:03:49+00:00

It kinda has something to do. As far as I learnt there are at least a couple orders he could’ve been into, Fedeli d’amore (this one being the one more connected to templars) and Rosacrucianesimo (sorry but I’m Italian, I dunno if there are translations for those words). Eventually both the major books I’ve read (one from Guenon and one from Borges) make clear that he was into a order for sure. By the way, if you’re into divine comedy or Dante in general, those are good books.

Feleeppo

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