Re: Agglutinating -> inflecting

Quoting Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>:

> En réponse à Mark J. Reed :
>
>
> >AJ> I meant anade_w_ism literally
> >
> >Okay, I give up.  What's an anadewism?
>
> Another Natlang Already Does it Except Worse ;))) . The main purpose
> of
> Maggel is to break this rule ;))) .
"_A_ Natlang ...", you mean. Or have you lied to us about the origin of
Maggel? :-)

> >CG> Hehe, you should take a look at the Arabic number system. Check
> the
> >CG> "Turkish and Arabic" message at
> >CG> http://www.livejournal.com/community/linguaphiles/327787.html.
> >
> >Wow!
>
> My reaction exactly! ;)))
>
>
> >In Methkaeki, all quantifiers, including numbers, are suffixes, so
> >you don't say "three men"; you say "manthree".  The generic plural is
> >a suffix meaning "some", but it's only used when the exact number is
> >unknown; otherwise the number itself functions as a plural marker.
>
> It's exactly how my Azak works. Azak is extremely agglutinating, and
> number
> is optional on nouns. If you want to indicate plural without specifying
> how
> much, you use the suffix -ar: various. If you want to indicate an
> exact
> number, you use the number suffixes. If you don't add any number suffix,
> it
> *doesn't* indicate singular, just that number is unknown or already
> known
> by context or unimportant for the discussion.
So the numeral "one" essentially works as a singular suffix?

                                                        Andreas

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