41 Collective Plural
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.