SENĆOŦEN: A Grammar of the Saanich Language Main Menu Contents Preface Acknowledgments PART 1 Introduction The organization of this grammar The Place of SENĆOŦEN in the Salishan Language Family Basics of the SENĆOŦEN word Useful phrases PART 2 The SENĆOŦEN Alphabet and Sounds Consonants Vowels and Diphthongs Notes on Pronunciation PART 3 SENĆOŦEN Grammatical Patterns 1 Transitive and Intransitive Verbs 2 Past and Future Tense 3 Basic Speech Acts 4 Nouns and Articles 5 Possessive Pronouns 6 Adjectives 7 Basic Word Order 8 The Preposition 9 Serial Verbs 10 Auxiliaries 11 Conjunction: ‘And/with’ and ‘but/without’ 12 No and Not 13 Self and Each Other 14 More Negative Words 15 Questions: ‘Who?,’ ‘What?,’ ‘Someone,’ ‘Something’ 16 Questions: ‘Do what?,’ ‘Say what?,’ and ‘Which one?’ 17 Subordinate Subjects in Questions 18 Questions: ‘Whose?’ 19 Every, All, Any, and Some 20 Comparison 21 Questions: ‘When?’ 22 Numbers 23 Time Expressions 24 Time Prefixes 25 Questions: ‘Where?’ 26 Location Expressions 27 Paths 28 Questions: ‘How?’ and ‘How much?’ 29 Adverbial Expressions 30 Conditional Clauses 31 Should, Must, Ought to, Want to 32 Object Pronouns 33 Passive 34 Strong, Weak, and Zero Stems 35 Participant Roles and Middle Voice 36 Recipient, Beneficiary, and Other Participants 37 Lexical Suffixes 38 Questions: ‘Why?’ 39 Because 40 Cause 42 The Actual Aspect 43 State, Result, and Duration 44 Activity Suffixes 45 Reflexive, Inchoative, and Noncontrol Middle 46 Ȼ Clauses 47 Relative Clauses 48 Speech Act Modifiers 49 Possessed Verbs 50 Summary of Particles with Ȼ 51 So Then ... 52 Reporting Verbs and Direct Quotes 53 Indirect Quotes 54 Verbal Prefixes 55 Nominalizing Prefixes 56 Adverbial Prefixes 57 More Demonstrative Articles 58 Objects of Intent and Emotion 59 More Reduplication Patterns 60 Interjections 61 Politeness Expressions 62 Rare Prefixes and Suffixes 63 A Fully Annotated Text 64 Texts to Annotate Appendix A: Technical Description of SENĆOŦEN Sounds Appendix B: SENĆOŦEN Pronouns Appendix C: Demonstrative Articles Appendix D: SENĆOŦEN Kin Terms Appendix E: Index to Technical Linguistic Topics Appendix F: Vocabulary Bibliography SENĆOŦEN Dictionary Basic SENĆOŦEN Dictionary without root and affix indexes

41 Collective Plural

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In English and the other European languages, when we want to talk about more than one of an item, we have to use a plural form. For example, to talk about more than one cat in English, we have to use the plural form ‘cats.’ For most nouns, the plural is required in English; it is ungrammatical, for example, say ‘*I saw two cat.’ We must use the plural and say ‘I saw two cats.’

In English, the plural is usually indicated with an ‘s’ or ‘es’ suffix on the noun. However, in some words the plural is marked by changing the vowel sound, as in ‘tooth’ / ‘teeth;’ in some words, the plural is marked by a different suffix as in ‘child’ / ‘children;’ and in some words, the plural is the same as the singular, as in ‘deer’ and ‘sheep.’

The SENĆOŦEN plural differs in several important ways from the European plural. The SENĆOŦEN plural is both simpler and more complicated than English. SENĆOŦEN is simpler in that the plural is not usually required. It is more complicated in that it is not marked by a simple suffix; there are a greater variety of ways the plural is marked in SENĆOŦEN.

There is an important difference in meaning between the English plural and the SENĆOŦEN plural. The SENĆOŦEN plural is really a ‘collective plural’ because it is used to refer to a ‘collection’ or ‘group’ or ‘bunch’ of items taken together. So, for example, the word SḴELAXE¸ is usually translated ‘dogs,’ but a more precise translation would be ‘bunch of dogs’ or ‘group of dogs.’

There are basically two ways of marking plural in SENĆOŦEN: infix and reduplication. For the infix, there are three patterns, covered in §41.1 and §41.2, and for reduplication there are four patterns, covered in §41.3. These sections describe the most common and repeated patterns in the language.

Some words take an irregular plural form and some words have no plural form at all. These cases are covered in §41.4.
 

This page has paths:

  1. PART 3 SENĆOŦEN Grammatical Patterns Montler, et al.

Contents of this path:

  1. 41.1. Infix EL
  2. 41.2. Infix LE or ¸LE
  3. 41.3. Plural reduplication
  4. 41.4. Irregular plurals and ṈEN¸

This page has tags:

  1. 60 Interjections Montler, et al.
  2. 61.4. Greeting and Leave Taking Montler, et al.
  3. 42.1. The ‘actual’ glottal stop infix Montler, et al.

Contents of this tag:

  1. 41.3. Plural reduplication
  2. 41.1. Infix EL
  3. 41.2. Infix LE or ¸LE
  4. 41.4. Irregular plurals and ṈEN¸