Newsgroups: sci.lang,soc.culture.esperanto
From: philip@storcomp.demon.co.uk (Phil Hunt)
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!udel!gatech!swrinde!pipex!peernews.demon.co.uk!storcomp.demon.co.uk!philip
Subject: Re: One point against Esperanto
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References: <794976261snz@storcomp.demon.co.uk> <DJOHNSON.95Mar14125238@tartarus.ucsd.edu> <HINSENK.95Mar15152124@cyclone.ERE.UMontreal.CA>
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Date: Fri, 17 Mar 1995 02:36:46 +0000
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In article <HINSENK.95Mar15152124@cyclone.ERE.UMontreal.CA>
           hinsenk@cyclone.ERE.UMontreal.CA "Hinsen Konrad" writes:
> In article <DJOHNSON.95Mar14125238@tartarus.ucsd.edu>
>  djohnson@tartarus.ucsd.edu (Darin Johnson) writes:
> 
>    > > Do Eurolang adjectives have a plural?  
>    > 
>    > No.
> 
>    This is a good thing too.
> 
> I am beginning to wonder why some people seem to think plural markers
> are essential on nouns, but bad on adjectives. There are many languages
> that have plural markers on both, and some that have none at all.
> But the only language I know that has this funny mixture is English.
> So why insist on it?

The reason Eurolang adjectives don't inflect for plurality is because 
if would add no extra information. OTOH, if I was consistent about this
rule, I could sometimes omit plural markers in nouns, eg:

   la decem autos = the ten cars

could be written:

   la decem auto

However, doing it this way would be alien to most European languages.

-- 
Phil Hunt...philip@storcomp.demon.co.uk
"on no pos fac omelet, opcum brekigation ovums"
