G~!1"''19 ••
"
---&~,-
u
Jan. f3 3t; 1964
wm:; 1:. ..,t.81'8
A pf1£N DI X ~ _
Sine;ulor, Plural,
Generic, C:ll'ld
Lndi vidual.Lz ed Categories
~.n·\!.clle.
W;
O.
Kpelleouns
H '~"W'~.Wf'(
1"11.
f'VJ
G "~"o\-i:.v
hS"le sometimes
\;een de.::torlbcd
\as in
Westermann and Nel~ia.n, !he K~~!l€ .~~!!_C~~~!~l}~~E~a;
Westermann and Bryan, 1j!e Lan~~~S!._!~:£~Aft'g!!)
as hiJving singular
and plural
fOl'ms & wi tr.. u;~· lr:.t-,lic •.•·.ion that
these forms have functi.ms e;encr£111y P(:l.L·~.LLel to those of
singulars
and plurals
.:.n3ngli1:lh or other iUl:vpealn languages.
This is mi61C:ldin~.
0.1. From the VIewpoint
of numbez. una cth~r
cotego·-
ries
fall
which have been I;onfused idth numbez-, Kpclle nouns
into two mujor c.taasee i per-sonal and impersonal.
0.2.
This c Laas.i r Lcat.Lon intersects
the classification of free and depe:dent nOUC.3 (which was not rec.ognized
at all by the acove-me.nt Loned rJ.uthors); this classif'icb.tion is based on the fc;~t that. same nouns (those labelled
dependent)
require
an ·:xpr~ssed possessor,
and that the
possessive.
pronoun forns for fir-;t and third person singular are different
froe those fox' free nouns.
This classification
has implications
a1.80 :for the problem or number.
Thus four t;ypes of ncr.ns , ill a 'Iiwo-by-two scheee , must be
considered.
1.
The stem fo:'m of an Lrrpez-aona I free noun has a
generic
reference.
L'he quer.t i.on of number is irrelevant.
The fac t tha t Engli$h equi ,,:~lel\ts tend to use a sineular
mosL cases but a p Lur-a L ill some cases reflects
only
the physica.lly
or c:lturall;
determined
probability
or
the appr-opr-La cene se of one of bhe ae obligatory
cate~ories
in .r;n{3:1ish. .I!;• .g. :
in
a
'Au elephan t; is a bie animal. t
sele kaa
sua kf .e , '
or
t Inephants
ire b.•.g animals.'
or' The eleI-'hEiDt
C''Ihe elephant"
may be g~neric in
is a bir, anina .• '
--Ltf1.-
in Enelish, or may refer to a known individual; only
the latter is reflected by the specific form Izela!1
in Kpelle.)
n~u t~no a~ p~ A t~&.
'one person (someone) has
brought a chicken (2£ chickens).'
(here the singular would be the more common Enelish version, for
purely statistical reasons in the culture.)
se
gamcnc
gboloI SUe
'It is oranges (2£ an orange)
in the basket.'
(Here the English plural would be
the usually sugge s t ed translation.)
su.
na koli kaa ncoi
'I saw a leopard in the bush.'
(Seeing more than one would be so unusual that the
number would ordinarily be specified; yet the generic rather than singular reference is so strong that
Kpelle people speaking ~nglish often say "I saw leopard in the bush.")
6'
.
t
nap&r£~
ka" n~.
This is my house.
(The ap ec Lf Lc
suffix -1 indicates that the totalj
of the category is referred to; and one does r '" usually have
more than one b:!'~se.)
e pa a
'Dogbe"V'sI. 'H~ brought his cutlass.'
(The
singularity of the subject normally implies that the
noun in the complement is also to be interpretad in
the obligatury singular category in English.)
pa a dfgbevaI.
'They brOuBht their cutlasses.'
(Conversely, the, plural subject normally implies
that the cutlasses are also plural.)
d1
1.1.
Sinp;ularity or plurality can be made eXi;licit
by an enumerator used with the stem form:
,
tono
160lu
,
tamaa
'one ch Lck,
,£i ve chlcl,s'
'0. lot of cLickens'
1.2. ImpF :onal free nouns also occur compounded
with a mor-pheme ';hichdoes not occur in isolation; its
form in compounds is /-'Oa/ (automatically /-"08/ after
mid tone). It is this form which has sometimes been described as "plural".
It is truE! that this torm ca.nnot
have a singular reference.
But that its reterence is
more tho.n bare plurality can be illustra.ted vividly by
an anecdote.
I once asked two informants (both tifthgrade students) to give a Kpelle equi31alent tor "There
a.re potatoes on the veranda".
One informant iJllmediately
said: fI/kw!e'D-'Da
kaa berei la/". Il'hesecond informant
lau~hed and said (and after seventeen years the ~nglish
parts of the qu.otations are probably not verbatim, but
they are faithful to ~be general tenor of the conversation) , "No, :fV;). [',!:.ou1d
saj' /kw!en kaa b~rr.i la/. n The
first inform&"jt objected, "No, the man said 'potatoes',
which is plural. So I said /kw!e'D-na/, not /kw!e'D/.
!kw{e1J! is singular."
(It is significant here that he
was using grammatical terminology; he did not claim outright that !kw!en! means '! potato' and nothing else.)
The second informant replied, "No. If you say /kw!e1l-'Da/.
it means that there is one potato here, and one potato
there, and some more over there, allover
the veranda.
I think the man meant that someone brou&~t a basket of
potatoes.
For that you must say /kwie"O/." The f'l!rstinformant agreed that /kw!e'D/ was pre£erable.
This and
many comparable uses suggest that torms with /-118/ do
not indicate mere plurality as opposed to singularity,
but rather individualized plurality -- a number of items
viewed as discrete ~nd to be considered one by one -rather than the
generic substance viewed without regard
,
to numerical quantification.
1.3.
vidualized
The contrast of genericreCerence
with indi(not merely numerical) plurality can be tur-
-1...4"4--
ther illustrated by an effort to express an ft.;ngllsh 8y1lor-ism in KpelJ.e; the informant was Mr. John ~aa.1ar. The
r.;nglishoriginb:L was "Some animals in the bush are black
deer. I have seen some animals in the bush. Tt,us I have
seen black deer."
(The syllogism waG, of course, deliberately fallacious.)
Mr. \vealar's Kpelle veI.'sion, t"lth a.
more precise retranslation, is:
A"
.,,,
A
,
A
,.,
sua ta-na kaa nooi su, gaa a tEE. nyan, Daa. sua ta-D&
kaa lwei su_ maa-mcni ma, tlas. tee kaa.
'Some individualized animals which are in the bush, it
(species) is black duiker. I have seen some individualized animals in the bush. Because of it, I have seen
(species) black duiker.t
Here "animalslf are referred to as an indefinite </ta/)
individualized plurality, not merely a lot of generic
animal «sua tamaa/)p but kinds of animals considered individually.
Black duiker, on the other hand, 1s considered without reference to number; seeing one would have
been adequate if the syllogism were valid, and seeilg several would have ~roven no more. All that is important
is that the species as such be re~resented.
1.4. Final proof that /-~a/ indicates more than
bare numerical plurali ty- is found in the contrast ot a
noun without and with. this addition, when numerical plurality is a Lready eXylicitly expressed by a numeral:
~apcrE saaaai n1
these my three houses
these may
be considered as a group, or are all that have been
discus~ed, or are all the houses I own)
I
,
'.
,
(
napr,rc-tlasaasai ~{
I these
three particular houses
of mine' (here three houses are selected for inaividual attent.ion, with the implication that I ••• own
others wh Lch are excluded from attention)
2.. Personal free nouns must be further subdj.vided
for our purposes int.o simple and compound types. Simple
personal nouns are not nume rous ; fv.rther (as in many lane;uages even distantly related, like most Bantu lanp:uc;.ges),
the word for "ch ief" does not be lonp; in this gramma Ideal
c a t ertor-y , bu t f.hlctions as an Lape r-aona.l noun. Compound
personal nouns include primarily terms for tribCl.laffiliation and occupation or bctivity.
2.1. Simple personal free nouns have' two forms which
may legitim'ltely be described as "a i ngu Lar-" and "pluralfl•
201 ..
1.
However , the "singular" or stem form is used
before enumerators, whether singular or :vlurcll:
, none
."
'one person'
nuu
'two people'
'a lot of people'
.,
nUll tamaa
,
2.1.2.
Where number is net so expressed, the stem
form of t.he nov: indicates singularity, and there Ls an
irreguJ.ar l~ll'r.;t).. form (perhaps with some c omp Laca t ed hist or-Lc aI I'eh;.t'i onship to / -na/, hut this is irrelevant):
,
nuu
A
nua
. '"
sJ.na
A
nr;ya
nia-pclc
'person
,ma.le
'female
'child
.
•
people'
males'
females'
children'
2 .•
20 Compound personal nouns have specifically singular and plural forms with a somewhat different distribution.
2.2.1.
In the singular. the final m~mber of the
compound (wi. th a very few exceptions which may be archaic
or special in 'some other way, but which arc irrelevant to
the overall structure) is the noun /nuul 'person'. The
correspondine; plural uses either I--oa./ or I-selal as the
final member of the compound, replacing Inuu/; these mor-
-L4b-
occur in isolation, but /-na/ ma:f probably
be identified with the compounding ele~ent used tor 1ndividualized p l ur-al s of Lmpe racna I nouns; /-aela/ Inay
possibly be the verb stem /Bela/ ';,::;plit' (?). In General. it appears that /-tl~1 is used primarily with tribal
terms, and I·$~~·})/ ,vit;hother terms, particularly (but
not exclusi~e~:) those in which the preceding morpheme
is a verb. An exa~ple of each type is:
.•. ..
~
,
toa-tla
a Loma person : Loma people
toa-nUll
t'"
"
t1i kc-·acla a workman
~~ "
Kc-nuu
: workmen
phemes do not
These nouns a.re distinguished
from their
simple counterparts in that it is the plural form which
is used before enume ra t o.r.s higher than one:
202.2.
~
1\
t ca-nuu
,
t cnc
... ,
toa-t>a feerc
, ke-nuu
, '"
"
tJ.i
tono
t1i
feerc
~c-sela
one Loma person
two Loma people
one workman
cwo workmen
3.
Impersonal dependent nouns are only rarely found
in any but a s Lng le form.
Number- (whether in the form of
plurality or i,ndividualization) is generally irrelevant.
3.1.
properties
A large numbe r of thl:lsenouns
in any cese.
su
(gonii) ma
(daai)
(nuu) nu'D
indicate unique
the inside (of the town)
the surface (of the stone)
the head (of a person)
302.
Some /)fthese nouns indicate body parts that
occur in pairs ~r possibly larger numbers.
Even here,
the stem form' j.s normally used for either one or the totalit~y. It wouLd only be in the unusual circumstance of
referring to uomething liKe smears of red paint on sund.ry individu;;.lized hands of several people that anything
12'
else nie;ht be appropriate; in such a case, these nouns
operate like the corresponding free nouns, using tho 1ndiviciuaiized IJlural form compounded with /-'08/. But ordinar:'.ly:
pa]a }casnY0e ma
'1 have a sore on my hand' 2£ 'I
lave sores on my hands' (or 'arm/arms')
, "
,
,
p.la kaa nyee tene ma
'I have a sore on one hand'
~."
,
.~',.~
~
eI
bot h my hands '
'a ] .2- xaa nJ8e re er-e mo.
n,....
V'~ sores on
1.
Per s ovra.L dependent
4.
nouns have specific singular
.nd p LuraI fO'l'tnS \tJith a distribution
like
.:ound per80n~ ~ free nouns (202 above).
4.1~ ~le ste~ is specifically
that
singular.
of
COfll-
Several of
t;hese nouns have pl~.~rala formed wi th a suffix / -n1/; by a
regula.r· 0.1 t erna t i on , stem-final
/n/ plus this suffix combines CiS /~"nli/. rl\here are a. few i..rregular
plurals simi-
lar to those for simple personal free nouns (2.1 2 above).
0
J' •. \'\
ilia
•
.LLHHll
{leye
y ..•
,
,
.•.
higher
2~
.•.
t;han
I'h e plural
older sibling
: ••• -s'
younger siblinG:
••• -s'
child
your children'
companion : your companions'
forms are " sed with enumerators
one"
ilia t~no
lliani
••
l.Baraa
a.s ar-an
LJ,.
A
a i.om x
'your
'your
'your
'your
feere
Iyour one older sibling'
'your two 61der siblings'
•