Why do agglutinative languages love plural?

[Woods]

İyi akşamlar. - "Good evening" or "Have a nice evening" in Turkish, I am not sure. Either way, evening in this language is "akşam" and -lar is a plural marker.

Olen töissa. - an awfully sounding (to mine ears) yleispuhekieli, i.e. mid-register between spoken language and the official Finnish which nobody speaks; in other words - what you would normally hear in Finland for "I am at work". To break it down:

"work" = työ
"work" as a plural inflectable stem: töi

So, we have plural at unexpected places for both Altaic and Uralic languages (or at least, their most widely spoken representatives* - someone who knows the less spoken ones such as Estonian, Hungarian (*actully I made a mistake here - Hungarian is more widely spoken than Finnish) or the other Turkic languages could tell if that happens also there).

I wonder if something similar occurs with other agglutinative languages - Greenlandic, Mongolian and whatever else there is.

And before all, what is the reason for this phenomenon?

[Massimiliano B]

[quote="Woods"]



And before all, what is the reason for this phenomenon?[/quote]


Evening and work can be seen as a complex of elements.
Languages use conventional distinctions like "olen työssä" versus "olen töissä" to convey subtle differences in meaning.
For example, in Italian I can say "in automobile" and "nell'automobile". Both mean literally "inside the car", but "in automobile" is used only if one wants to say "by car" while "nell'automobile" means only "in the car, inside the car".
Sometimes, on the contrary, there is no difference between two options. In Italian I can say "in casa" or "a casa"; both means "at home".

[OiJoua]

İyi akşamlar. - "Good evening" or "Have a nice evening" in Turkish, I am not sure. Either way, evening in this language is "akşam" and -lar is a plural marker.

Yeah because in Turkish it's wishing you to have good evenings, not just this one right now.
İyi akşamlar, iyi günler
It's to be polite, like when you say "and many more" for birthday wishes (writing those words gives another example, how we say in English the words "birthday wishes" or "I send greetings" instead of "I send a birthday wish" or "I send a greeting"). Yeah just one birthday each year, but we send plural greetings and plural wishes. So here's this same unexpected plural, in English, too.
In Spanish (not agglutination language) its this same meaning as in Turkish:
Buenas tardes, buenos dias
Wishing you to have good evenings, good days.
So its this same idea of best wishes, warm greetings, many good evenings or good days.

[Woods]

İyi akşamlar. - "Good evening" or "Have a nice evening" in Turkish, I am not sure. Either way, evening in this language is "akşam" and -lar is a plural marker.

Yeah because in Turkish it's wishing you to have good evenings, not just this one right now.
İyi akşamlar, iyi günler
It's to be polite, like when you say "and many more" for birthday wishes.

(...)

In Spanish (not agglutination language) its this same meaning as in Turkish:
Buenas tardes, buenos dias
Wishing you to have good evenings, good days.
So its this same idea of best wishes, warm greetings, many good evenings or good days.

That is an interesting point about Spanish - I never thought of those -s's as plural markers, I thought they were some kind of fossilised forms; plus Spanish has tons of stuff of which you're not really able to tell where it comes from at first glance, so I don't even try to understand it. With Turkish though, that is striking, and with Finnish even more - because it is generally a lot more precise than English or Spanish.

The other idea about wishing for this evening to be nice and for many more to come is very interesting! Are you sure about that? If we have any Turks around here, can they confirm if they are thinking of several evenings at the same time when greeting a good evening or wishing a nice one? I can't think of other examples of unexpected plurals in Turkish off the top of my head, but I think I've seen more!

Evening and work can be seen as a complex of elements.
Languages use conventional distinctions like "olen työssä" versus "olen töissä" to convey subtle differences in meaning.

So you think Finns might be emphasising the complexity of the work they do by using the plural?

[OiJoua]

The other idea about wishing for this evening to be nice and for many more to come is very interesting! Are you sure about that? If we have any Turks around here, can they confirm if they are thinking of several evenings at the same time when greeting a good evening or wishing a nice one? I can't think of other examples of unexpected plurals in Turkish off the top of my head, but I think I've seen more!

I'm not Turkish, but you can google and find this same explanation from Turkish speakers on hinative, wordreference, duo, quora, etc, etc.
Like these:

Turks do not make wishes lightly or casually - the person I tell "good night" to today, I'll likely still want to enjoy a good night the day after, and the day after that as well. It's kind of an unlimited, ongoing offer

“İyi akşamlar” I wish you not just one nice evening but many nice evenings.

when you say “iyi akşamlar”, “akşamlar” means that all the possible evenings that person(you have said this to) can see in his/her life.

when we say "iyi günler" (the surface structue), we mean to say "Daha nice iyi günler göresin" (the deep structure; meaning I wish you lived to see many more good days)

Turks so generous; don't cramp/restrict "good wishes" only for a unique instance.

You can google it. Plural is used for any Turkish wishes or greetings, like iyi şanslar "good luck(s)", iyi eğlenceler "have(good) fun(s)", iyi bayramlar "happy(good) holiday(s)", tebrikler "congratulation(s)", teşekkürler "thank(s)", bir ömür boyu mutluluklar "wish you a lifetime of happiness(es)"....

[Massimiliano B]

So you think Finns might be emphasising the complexity of the work they do by using the plural?

Maybe.

In Italian you can say "vacanza" (holiday) or "vacanze" (holidays) indifferently. "Sono stato in vacanza in Grecia"/ "Ho passato le vacanze in Grecia" means both "I've spent my holidays in Greece".

[Dormouse559]

Spanish is not agglutinative, but it uses plural in its time-based greetings: buenos días, buenas tardes, buenas noches.

[Woods]

you can google and find this same explanation from Turkish speakers on hinative, wordreference, duo, quora, etc, etc.
Like these:

Turks do not make wishes lightly or casually - the person I tell "good night" to today, I'll likely still want to enjoy a good night the day after, and the day after that as well. It's kind of an unlimited, ongoing offer

Very interesting. So kind of like, the translation would be "I wish you to spend many more good evenings." If you said this to me, I'd think you were saying that you didn't want or expect to see me anytime soon. But that is sort of the opposite of what those Turks are explaining. I wonder if they truly think of it this way, or it is sort of a forced explanation, i.e. if you ask somebody to explain why they are saying something in a certain way, they might not necessarily know why and just come up with something. I'm just being cautious here and making sure that's truly how they think of it.

when you say “iyi akşamlar”, “akşamlar” means that all the possible evenings that person(you have said this to) can see in his/her life.

All right, but that is so exaggerated! It's already surprising that we're all saying the same thing when we leave - "good night" that is. I never thought of it, but I'd attribute it to the fact that the languages I learnt all come from the same family, or to cultural contact. The Chinese don't say "have a good night", do they? Do Hmong people usually say that? Maybe that's the Turks' interpretation of the Western greetings - "if we're going to wish them a nice evening like they wish each other, why not add a bit of our own traditional way of making wishes?" If anyone has any idea how it was in Ottoman and we compare with Persian and Arabic, that may help to figure it out.

By the way what's the situation of the Hmong language? Are there large communities and is it being used to produce good literature and art and in education, or is it disappearing in favour of Vietnamese, Chinese and Lao? I suppose it is also an isolating language? I see you have two cool abugidas as well, but I guess most people use Latin?

Plural is used for any Turkish wishes or greetings, like iyi şanslar "good luck(s)", iyi eğlenceler "have(good) fun(s)", iyi bayramlar "happy(good) holiday(s)", tebrikler "congratulation(s)", teşekkürler "thank(s)", bir ömür boyu mutluluklar "wish you a lifetime of happiness(es)"....

İyi şanslar is extremely bizarre because that's a butchered French word, which in its original is uncountable. I used it once when I was in a situation to speak to a Turk through Google Translate, but I wish that if I learn this language there will be an equivalent, because it's painful to say something so non-native, misspelt and illogical for someone who speaks French.

Actually, if you put it in the plural in French it would mean something else - "I wish you a lot of opportunities" rather than "good luck." Not that anyone would say it that way though.

In Italian you can say "vacanza" (holiday) or "vacanze" (holidays) indifferently. "Sono stato in vacanza in Grecia"/ "Ho passato le vacanze in Grecia" means both "I've spent my holidays in Greece".

Nice to know - in French it's only plural. There might be some context where you would use the singular, but not in everyday situations. Here the idea is quite clear though - you usually get several days at once, different holidays packed together etc. It never got me wondering why they're saying it this way, although in Bulgarian people use the same word in the singular - they probably stole it from the Italians, or further back from the Romans.*

*The Bulgarian Academy of Sciences says it actually comes from Russian, which butchered the French version... all that useless work for a word which is not even needed, for there is a better, shorter and clearer native word which means the same. Actually it's useful for one thing - learning Italian and French. At least they partly compensated me for destroying my language by making it easier to learn other ones. Went totally off topic here 😄

[Naava]

Evening and work can be seen as a complex of elements.
Languages use conventional distinctions like "olen työssä" versus "olen töissä" to convey subtle differences in meaning.

So you think Finns might be emphasising the complexity of the work they do by using the plural?

I don't know the history of the word here, but my best guess is it's because each task you carry out during your working hours is seen as one "työ"*. You complete many of those before your day ends, so maybe that's why we talk about it in plural.

*this meaning of the word exists and is not something I made up (cf päivän hyvä työ = a good deed of the day) but I don't know for sure if this is where the plural comes from.

[Woods]

Evening and work can be seen as a complex of elements.
Languages use conventional distinctions like "olen työssä" versus "olen töissä" to convey subtle differences in meaning.

So you think Finns might be emphasising the complexity of the work they do by using the plural?

I don't know the history of the word here, but my best guess is it's because each task you carry out during your working hours is seen as one "työ"*. You complete many of those before your day ends, so maybe that's why we talk about it in plural.

*this meaning of the word exists and is not something I made up (cf päivän hyvä työ = a good deed of the day) but I don't know for sure if this is where the plural comes from.

Yeah, I was just thinking something like that. Maybe my issue with it comes from the translation - "I am at work", which in Finnish should probably be more accurately translated as "olen toimistossa" or something. So "olen töissa" is not slang at the end and Finns wouldn't say "olen työssa" in yleiskieli? I guess we should stop translating stuff, both when we try to explain a concept from another language into our own and when learning languages - it would solve so many problems!

That gets me thinking, what should I use instead of "olen töissä" if I don't care too much about my job - i.e. if I don't consider the multiple tasks that I carry out there so important and I just go to get paid? Maybe I would prefer to use something neutral bordering negative if I am getting paid to do something that is not particularly important to me, but not outright obvious and putting me into explainer mode with people who don't get it from the choice of words.

"Olen työpaikalla"? "Olen toiminnassa"? I can't think of something because my vocabulary is still poor :)

[OiJoua]

I wonder if they truly think of it this way, or it is sort of a forced explanation, i.e. if you ask somebody to explain why they are saying something in a certain way, they might not necessarily know why and just come up with something. I'm just being cautious here and making sure that's truly how they think of it.

I think with a greeting we say it so often that we don't think about it each time, not every person necessarily know why. It's just the way people are use to saying it. So my answer doesen't mean all Turks think about the future days or evenings every time they say this. Of course not. Like how people say "fine" to answer "how are you" in English without thinking and then after the greeting they tell how terrible things are. It's the greeting and you don't change it. What I wrote it's the explanation given about why it's plural in Turkish, if you research it.

I'd attribute it to the fact that the languages I learnt all come from the same family, or to cultural contact. The Chinese don't say "have a good night", do they? Do Hmong people usually say that?

In Chinese 晚安 (calm night) if you're going to bed. In Hmong it's pw zoo os (sleep well or good sleep). In Turkish there's this same meaning as pw zoo os: iyi uykular (sleep well or good sleep). Same meaning but it's plural in Turkish, good sleeps.