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Mentilliath wrote:I can see why it disappears, but I wonder why it arises in the first place, if its fate is often to disappear.
I've done something similar with the dual in Halvian, yeah. Words like "both" and "two" are inherently dual (like they are in Latin, the last vestige of the dual in that language), and the dual is used for words like "eyes", "ears", "legs", etc.
And yeah, this declension is very thematic. There are 6 declensions. 5 of them are thematic (stems based on the 5 vowels), and one of them is the athematic "miscellaneous" declension, which is also one of the biggest haha. So we'll get to that one
Those would be only Slovenian and both Sorbian languages. The other Slavic languages have lost it.Mentilliath wrote:Slovenian I believe as well has a productive dual. I think as far as IE goes, only a few Slavic languages have duals that are still used.
Interestingly enough, for things that naturally come in pairs, Slovene uses plural and not dual. So if you want to say "I have eyes", it'd be plural. In such cases the dual is used only if you want to emphasise it, eg. "I have two eyes."Mentilliath wrote:I've done something similar with the dual in Halvian, yeah. Words like "both" and "two" are inherently dual (like they are in Latin, the last vestige of the dual in that language), and the dual is used for words like "eyes", "ears", "legs", etc.
Ashucky wrote:Those would be only Slovenian and both Sorbian languages. The other Slavic languages have lost it.
Interestingly enough, for things that naturally come in pairs, Slovene uses plural and not dual. So if you want to say "I have eyes", it'd be plural. In such cases the dual is used only if you want to emphasise it, eg. "I have two eyes."
Ashucky wrote:
Btw, the language's looking pretty good!
Mentilliath wrote:A common dual form in Halvian is the 1st person plural pronoun "hā", which is often used as "inclusive we" and can be translated as "you and I" (compare to "híme" and "ōns", the singular and plural 1st person pronouns).
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