Universal #564

Legacy number: 564

 Number  562
 Original  If there is a dual with nouns other than those denoting natural pairs, there will be one with natural-pair nouns as well.
 Standardized  IF there is a dual with nouns other than those denoting natural pairs, THEN there will be one with natural-pair nouns as well.
 Formula  Du (¬natural pair noun) ⇒ Du (natural pair noun)
 Keywords  number, dual, noun, pair
 Domain  inflection
 Type  implication
 Status  achronic
 Quality  absolute?
 Basis  languages in Humboldt 1830, including Basque (isolate), Greenlandic (Eskimo-Aleut), Saami (Uralic), Tahitian, Malay (both Malayo-Polynesian), Indo-European (e.g. Sanskrit, Ancient Greek), Semitic languages, American languages (e.g. Quechua, Totonaca, Huasteca, Mapuche, Tamanaca, Chayma)
 Source  Humboldt 1830, as interpreted in Plank 1989: 308; Plank 1994b: 232

← Back to Universals Archive

Discussion
Counterexamples
Greenlandic Eskimo (Eskimo-Aleut) (before the dual became obsolete) and Nama (Khoisan) limit their nominal dual to nouns other than those denoting natural pairs (Plank 1989: 309).
Notes
The reverse formulation: “If there is a Dual with nouns denoting natural pairs, there will be one with non-natural-pair nouns as well” does not hold. Plank (1989: 309-10) mentions as counterexamples: Maidu (Maiduan), Kâte (Huon, Trans-New Guinea, Papuan), Ngiyambaa (Pama-Nyungan) and Tunica (isolate possibly remotely related to Algonquian). Plank proposes a less restrictive implication: “If in any language some nouns are eligible for dual marking while others are not (or less readily), the criterion is whether or not they denote natural pairs.”Refining this implication, Plank (1996) suggests that two further dual preferences need to be added to the implicatum: animate rather than inanimate, frequently-counted objects rather than other objects.
Comment
Frans Plank · 3 Aug 2006
The reverse formulation: "If there is a Dual with nouns denoting natural pairs, there will be one with non-natural-pair nouns as well" does not hold. Plank (Plank 1989: 309-10) mentions as counterexamples: Maidu (Maiduan), Kâte (Huon, Trans-New Guinea, Papuan), Ngiyambaa (Pama-Nyungan) and Tunica (isolate possibly remotely related to Algonquian). Plank proposes a less restrictive implication: "If in any language some nouns are eligible for dual marking while others are not (or less readily), the criterion is whether or not they denote natural pairs."
Refining this implication, Plank 1996 suggests that two further dual preferences need to be added to the implicatum: animate rather than inanimate, frequently-counted objects rather than other objects.