On Nov 15, 2019, at 08:06, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
On 11/14/2019 5:04 PM, Lieven L. Litaer wrote: Regarding the problem we recently had with {'ar}, Okrand answered:
Plural if the questioned noun can be singular or plural (it lacks a plural suffix) and the translation is “how many?”; singular if the questioned noun is something that can’t be counted and the translation is “how much?” So {Duj ’ar DIlegh?} “How many ships do we see?” {bIQ ’ar wIlegh?} “How much water do we see?”
So we now have a mass-noun detector.
And we seemingly have {nIn} and {bIQ} confirmed as mass nouns, if they weren’t already definitively known to be mass nouns. Have we ever had canonical information on whether mass nouns can take plural suffixes? I suppose at least with {-mey}, that could always just carry a “scattered all about” reading, similarly to how “waters” would in English.