Dual (grammatical number)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dual forms exist in some languages in addition to singular and plural forms of nouns and pronouns; the latin term is dualis. When a dual form is used, the intent is to indicate that there are precisely two of the things referred to by the noun or pronoun.

1 Comparative characteristics
2 Use in modern languages
3 Dual form in Indo-European languages
4 Examples
5 Languages with dual number
6 Notes
7 See also

[edit] Comparative characteristics

Most, but not all, languages make a distinction between singular and plural: English, for example, distinguishes between 'man' and 'men', or 'house' and 'houses'. In some languages, in addition to such singular and plural forms there is also a dual form, which is used when exactly two people or things are meant. If English had a dual (let's imagine it involved adding -a to the singular), 'man' might go something like this: one man, two mana, three men etc. In many languages with dual forms, use of the dual is mandatory, and the plural is used only for groups greater than two. In some languages, however (for example, many modern Arabic dialects, including Egyptian Arabic), use of the dual is optional. In other languages (for example, Hebrew), the dual exists only for a few measure words and for words that naturally come in pairs (such as eyes). In Slovenian, strangely, the dual is used for most nouns, but not for nouns that come in natural pairs (like socks or eyes); the plural is used instead. In many other Slavic languages there is a special plural for counting 2, as well as 3 and 4 (see zloty for an example in Polish).

Although relatively few languages have the dual number and most have no number or only singular and plural, using different words for groups of two and groups greater than two is not uncommon. English has words distinguishing dual vs. plural number, including: both/all, between/among, latter/last, either/any, and neither/none. Japanese, which today has no grammatical number, also has words dochira (which of the two) and dore (which of the three or more).

[edit] Use in modern languages

Among living languages, modern standard Arabic has a mandatory dual number, marked on nouns, verbs, adjectives and pronouns. (First-person dual forms, however, do not exist; compare this to the lack of third-person dual forms in the old Germanic languages.) Many of the spoken Arabic dialects have a dual marking for nouns (only), but its use is not mandatory. Hebrew, a related Semitic language, also has some forms of dual, largely for measurements of time, parts of the body and things that come in pairs, such as שבועיים /ʃvua'jim/ (two weeks), אופניים /Ofɐna'jim/ (bicycles), עיניים /ʕeɪna'jim/ (eyes), שיניים /ʃina'jim/ (teeth, even all 32), מכנסיים /Mɪxnasa'jim/ (pants), שדיים /ʃada'jim/ (breasts), and משקפיים /miʃqafa'jim/ (eyeglasses). Likewise, Akkadian had a dual number, though its use was confined to standard phrases like "two hands", "two eyes", and "two arms".

The Inuktitut language uses dual forms, the related Greenlandic language, however, does not.

In Austronesian languages, particularly Polynesian languages such as Hawaiian, Niuean and Tongan, possess a dual number for pronouns but not for nouns (indeed, they tend not to mark nouns for number at all). Other Austronesian languages, particularly those spoken in the Philippines, have a dual first-person pronoun; these languages include Ilokano (data), Tausug (kita), and Kapampangan (ikata). These forms mean we, but specifically you and I. This form once existed in Tagalog but has largely disappeared, save for certain rural dialects, since the middle of the 20th century.

The dual was a standard feature of the Proto-Uralic language, and lives on in Sami languages and Samoyedic languages, while other branches like Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian have lost it. Sami also features dual pronouns, expressing the concept of "we two here" as contrasted to "we". Nenets, a Samoyedic language, features a complete set of dual possessive suffixes for two systems, the number of possessor and the number of possessed objects (for example, "two houses of us two" expressed in one word).

The dual form is also used in several modern Indo-European languages, such as Scottish Gaelic, Slovenian and Sorbian (see below for details). The dual was a common feature of all early Slavic languages at the beginning of the second millennium.

[edit] Dual form in Indo-European languages

From comparisons of existing and recorded languages, linguists have concluded that the Proto-Indo-European language had dual forms. This use was preserved in the earliest records of Indo-European languages. This is best represented in Sanskrit, with a mandatory dual number for all inflected categories: nouns, verbs, adjectives and pronouns. The Ancient Greek language used in the Homeric texts, the Iliad and Odyssey, likewise had dual forms for all inflected categories, although their use was only sporadic, owing as much to artistic prerogatives as dictional and metrical requirements within the hexameter meter. In the classical dialects, the dual tended to disappear but was continued in the Attic dialect of Athens through the fifth century B.C, again sporadically according the author's taste and certain stock conventions.

Old Church Slavonic and Proto-Slavic (the ancestor of the Slavic languages) had dual forms, as did Old Irish and Avestan. (Sanskrit and the Slavic languages agree in showing only three dual forms for nouns: nominative-accusative-vocative, dative-ablative-instrumental, and genitive-locative. Ancient Greek had only two forms, and Old Irish only one. Avestan has a genitive dual separate from the locative, but this may not go back to Proto-Indo-European.)

The dual form was present in the early Germanic languages. Gothic had first- and second-person dual marking on verbs and pronouns; Old English, Old Norse and other old Germanic languages had dual marking only on first- and second-person pronouns. The dual has disappeared from all modern Germanic languages -- although only quite recently in North Frisian<ref>Howe, Stephen. The Personal Pronouns in the Germanic Languages. A study of personal pronoun morphology and change in the Germanic languages from the first records to the present day. [Studia Linguistica Germanica, 43]. Berlin: de Gruyter,1996. (xxii + 390 pp.) pp. 193-195.</ref>. Interestingly, the old dual pronouns have become the standard plural pronouns in Icelandic. The last reminder in the Scandinavian languages is the pronoun begge ("both"): You have to say begge to ("the (both) two") and alle tre ("the all three") - it's impossible to say *alle to ("the all two").

Early Celtic languages show dual forms, and in modern Scottish Gaelic dual forms of nouns are required following the numeral dà ("two"). However, when no numeral is present the plural form is used. In the case of masculine nouns, the dual form is identical to that of the singular, however in conservative usage some feminine nouns have a distinct dual form. Example: with a masculine noun - dà chù "two dogs" (singular cù) vs. trì coin "three dogs"; with a feminine noun - dà làimh "two hands" (singular làmh) vs. trì làmhan "three hands". Brythonic languages (Breton language, Welsh language, Cornish language) still have it.

Among Indo-European languages of the present day, the dual form endured relatively long in the Slavic languages. Slovenian uses the dual number in full (although it tends to disappear in informal speech among young people), and Sorbian, the Slavic language of a very small minority in Germany, also uses the dual number. Among the Baltic languages, the dual form existed but is now obsolete in standard Lithuanian, being used in poetic contexts and some dialects.

[edit] Examples

[edit] Austro-Bavarian

In Austro-Bavarian the old dual form is used today for all plurals. There is no separate dual form anymore.

Adoption of the plural:
- in Austro-Bav. ös 'you (pl. nominative) < you (nominative) two'
- in Austro-Bav. enk 'you (pl. accusative) < you (accusative) two'

[edit] Gothic

Got. weis "we" vs. wit "we both"

[edit] Lithuanian

Singular	Dual	Plural
vyras ("Man")	vyru	vyrai
mergina ("Girl")	mergini	merginos
einu ("I go")	einava	einame

[edit] Dual form in Slavic languages

This article or section may be confusing or unclear for some readers,
and should be edited to rectify this.
Please improve the article, or discuss the issue on the talk page.

Every Slavic language has retained lexical remnants of the dual. The old plural of "oko", eye, was "očesa". In almost every language in which the dual has disappeared, "očesa" has disappeared along with it, and the form "oči" has predominated. (Slovene "očesa" pushed out "oči" instead, becoming the proper dual (and plural) of "oko"). The same is true for "uho" ("ear"). In Bulgarian and Macedonian, "rące" and "noze" have become the regular plurals for old nouns "hands" ("arms") and "feet" ("legs").

[edit] Czech

Official Czech also has a few remnants of the dual: certain body parts in instrumental and genitive (and the modifying adjectives) require the dual, for example, se svýma očima (instrumental dual: "with one's own eyes") and u nohou (genitive dual: "at the feet"). However, it has lost its numerical meaning: it is used for these body parts regardless of their number (skladba pro čtyři ruce "composition for four hands") and the plural is used for figurative meanings (hrnec s dvěma uchama "pot with two ears(=handles)"). Colloquial Czech substitutes the instrumental dual for the instrumental plural. Thus, while s kamarády "with friends" would be grammatically correct, this, in colloquial Czech, is rendered s kamarádama, which reflects the form of the dual. In old Czech, the dual was more extensively used, and included such things as pronouns (onĕ - "they" when referring to two females).

Remnant of the indo-european dual, the pronoun "oba" (us two, those two, those two things) and the cardinal number "dva" (two) are declined whereas every other number bigger than "two" is invariable :

case / gender	masculine	feminine	neutral
nominative, accusative	oba ; dva	obě ; dvě	obě ; dvě
genetive, lovative	obou ; dvou	obou ; dvou	obou ; dvou
dative, instrumental	oběma ; dvěma	oběma ; dvěma	oběma ; dvěma

[edit] Polish

In Polish there is only singular and plural. But there used to be a dual, which (like in nearly all slavic languages) has become extinct. Traces can still be seen in today's Polish, though rarely, for example, with body parts and some objects that come in pairs like "two hands", "two eyes", "two ears" (but not "two legs") — both the plural and the "fossilised" dual form for them is correct:

hands: nominative ręce (dual), genitive rąk (plural), instrumental rękami (plural), rękoma (dual)
eyes: nominative oczy (dual), genitive oczu (dual), instrumental oczami (plural), oczyma (dual)
ears: nominative uszy (dual), genitive uszu (dual), instrumental uszami (plural)

For example, w ręce ("in one hand"), w ręku ("in both hands"), w rękach ("in the hands", for example, of enemies, that is, in many hands), which derives from ręka ("Hand"), dwie ręce ("two hands"), trzy ręki (archaic) ("three hands"). This is often seen in sayings and most recently in the work of polish writer Adam Mickiewicz, in the 19th century.

Traces of the dual remain also in numerals like 20 and 200:

dziesięć - dzieścia - dzieści (ten):
- 10 = dziesięć
- 20 = dwadzieścia
- 30 = trzydzieści
- 40 = czterdzieści

sto - ście - sta (hundred):
- 100 = sto
- 200 = dwieście
- 300 = trzysta
- 400 = czterysta

[edit] Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian

In Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian the dual form has been retained in nouns that appear together with numbers: two, three and four and with the word "both". This form is merged with singular genitive case, and the plural genitive is used with numbers of 5 and more:

For noun vuk ("wolf"):

singular	1 vuk
plural (without number)	vukovi
dual (singular genitive)	2,3,4 vuka
plural with number (plural genitive)	5 vukova

[edit] Slovene

As already stated, Slovene (also known as Slovenian) uses dual in full, (except for natural pairs). This may be explained by the fact that Slovene as a formalised language is relatively new and the geographical situation of Slovenia (greatly mountainous) favored a strong inertia. For some declensions (like genitive), the dual form merges with the plural form. The presence of such a number does not invalidate the existence of the pronoun both (oba(dva) or obe(dve)).

Dual is one of the most distinctive feature of Slovene language and a mark of recognition, and is often noticed in tourist brochures. Some explanations (the both of us example) tend to make dual as a mark of closeness, while really by itself it has nothing to do with closeness, just with numbering (consider the intimacy of two cars…), although, of course, context may depict such a “real” closeness.

Slovene courses for foreigners tend to dismiss or, at least, delay the learning of the dual number, further encouraging its “segregation”.

Nominative case of noun "city":

singular: 1 mesto
dual: 2 mesti
plural: 3-4 mesta, 5+ mest

[edit] Russian

In Russian the dual form has been retained in male nouns that appear together with numbers: two, three and four and with the word "both". This form is merged with singular genitive case, and the plural genitive is used with numbers of 5 and more. The adjectives in dual have their plural genitive case for male nouns, and nominative plural form for others:

Examples:

singular	1 новый завод	1 новая школа	1 новое платье
plural (without number)	новые заводы	новые школы	новые платья
dual (singular genitive)	2,3,4 новых завода	2,3,4 новые школы	2,3,4 новых платья
plural with number (plural genitive)	5 новых заводов	5 новых школ	5 новых платьев