Talk:Dual (grammatical number)

The original text said 'In Sami' that refer to the people, not the language. So I elaborated that by adding Sami people, and added Lappish for better understanding on what people this refer to. (Yes I am a speaker of Lappish and we do indeed use dualis both as a separate word, and this also change the grammatical form.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.208.187.46 (talk) 21:13, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Locative and the Dual in Croatian

I have to point out the error of saying "In Croatian, Serbian, and Sorbian, the forms given are for the genitive, since there is no locative form." - There is a locative form for nouns in Croatian. Example: N. vuk G. vuka L. vuku I don't know about Sorbian, but I'm pretty sure Serbian also has a locative form. Delete?

Also to the poster below me. All Slavic languages retained the dual in noun form (be it different forms or just accentual), Croatian and Serbian also (1 vuk, 2 vuka, 3 vuka, 4 vuka, 5 vukova...), but only the Slovene has the verb form, and a different form for 2, apart from 3 and 4. Kerebald (talk) 12:49, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

BCS duals: Within the BCS group, the recent official standards really do not include now any true dual, but historically it existed at least in Bosnia and Croatia, and in non-standard Croatian dialects dual well persisted also up to nowadays, as follows:

• In former šćakavian texts on the Bosnian script (bosančica) a dual partly similar to Slovene (and Chakavian) sporadically occured.
• In former Croatian texts on the Glagolitic script, dual was also present resembling Slovene and Chakavian.
• In Kaykavian texts and in its actual speakers, dual is almost absent and replaced by plurals (despite the partial similarity of Kaykavian dialect to Slovene).
• In the coastal Chakavian being my native idiom (my speciality: dialectology), dual is now alive, being similar to Slovenian duals: I use it often in private speaking with family. Dual disappeared in eastern half-Chakavians of the Dalmatian mainland under the pression of Shtokavian standard, but it survives westwards in Istra peninsula and islands. E.g. the attested former dual of 20th century now disappeared at Pazin, Novi, Rab, etc. However it survives well in minor hamlets of Vinodol valley (Bribir-Grižane), also at Buzet and Baška, etc. The archaic duals in northern Adriatic islands are very peculiar, with complete declension and ending in masculine on -oj, feminine -aj, neutrum -ej (different from Slovene and similar to Sorbian). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.136.47.19 (talk) 04:07, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Dual in Czech

Question/comment: I am not a linguist, but Russian and Czech are both my native languages. Since I grew up in the United States, I lack much of the formal education in Russian/Czech languages, so this article was very interesting. I was surprised, however, to see the distinction pointed out in Russian about counting, namely that the words change for 1, then for 2,3,4, and then from 5 on, but not in Czech. Czech is identical in this regard (for example, 1 mesto, 2 mesta, 3 mesta, 4 mesta, 5 mest, 6 mest, ...), and thus it should be pointed out in the article that Czech still uses the dual in this sense (if, as in the Russian section, the dual can be extended in this sense to 3 and 4 as well as 2). If I am missing something, I would be very fascinated if someone could explain. Thanks much.

Merger with Dual number

What about the article "Dual number"? These need a merger.. -Gabbe

Yup. Move the grammatical stuff here, maybe, and leave the other page for maths? -- Tarquin

English both

English 'both'?
What about English use of 'both' as opposed to 'all'? Is this some sort of dual number too? --romanm 19:47, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It's a word which generally refers only to two, but it's not really part of a morphological paradigm or set of inflectional forms, so it's not the best example of a grammatical dual. It falls between a word like "pair" and a true paradigmatic dual. AnonMoos 03:54, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

• Actually 'both' has a morphological paradigm: The words 'both' and 'all' and 'each' (etc.) have special placement, as either before a noun or after, while numerical count numbers would be used mainly before a noun (not after). For example: "He gave money to them both as partners, but he gave them each a car for separate travels" or also: "The girls both thanked him for what he had given them each". The dual number in English does exist, but in limited forms, such as placing the word 'both' after a plural noun phrase or pronoun, rather than appending a special ending other than "-(e)s". Another example: "The husband and wife both are writing text to explain dual forms in English grammar" as an example adding the word 'both' where a plural noun phrase does not add ending "-(e)s" but whole word 'both' for the dual number. -Wikid77 (talk) 14:24, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Explanation for the loss of the dual

Is there any theory why the Indo-European languages have all lost their and gone to a system with only singualr and plural (except for Slovene)? This seems odd to have happened separately and near-universally. Xyzzyva 23:40, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)

The languages tend to simplify. (Even in informal Slovene the Dual number is sometimes replaced by plural.) komar

Not really. It's just that people treat neuter nouns as maculine and use masculine dual (dva stola - dva okna). Other than that, dual is perfectly alive and kicking. Žarišče (talk) 22:02, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Right. Similarly, in most modern Arabic vernaculars, plural forms are used instead, although there are some exceptions and proper Modern Standard Arabic does indeed have dual number.

That's interesting. Why are we going through a phase of simplification in all languages? (The original complexity must have come during an earlier phase when the language got more complicated) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.212.36.211 (talk) 22:12, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

In general, the popular language usage tends to simplify many forms, such as formal term "e-mail" (with hyphen "-") spelled on the Internet over 80% "email" and so Google now matches both forms together. Similarly, linguists have noted reduction of hyphens in word "teen-ager" as now "teenager" or diaeresis "coöperative" as "cooperative" (to the point phone spell-correctors fail to recognize "coöp" as a word). Schools have even stopped teaching cursive writing, per the reason ppl who need to write fast would use keyboard entry, perhaps w/ spell-correct. -Wikid77 (talk) 22:01, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Old English

Also, I thought Old English made 100% use of the dual, thus giving us such triads as cow - cyne (modern spelling "kyne") - cows, ox - oxen - oxes, eye - eyen - eyes, child - children - childs, brother - brethren - brethres (modern spelling "brothers"), Node 02:03, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I don't think so. AFAIR the -en form (oxen, boxen etc) is older, Anglo-Saxon form (cf. German plural) while -s form is newer, Norman form (cf. French plural). rrw

Old English had dual forms of first and second person pronouns. Example, ic/wit/we for I/we two/we all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.255.236.207 (talk) 19:44, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Varying noun plurals in Old English are nothing to do with the dual form. Nouns ending "-a" such as oxa ("ox") and several feminine noun forms take an "-n" as their plural. Some neuter nouns are unchanged in the plural, while others take a "-u". Some nouns change their vowel. Most masculine nouns take "-as". The modern "-s" plural is from Old English, not French, though the latter influence may have strengthened its grip.

The dual is found only in the first and second persons (wit, git). It seems to have been dying out throughout the period. Hogweard (talk) 19:03, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Duals in Russian and English

Russian seems to be similar to Serbian in that it uses the genitive singular case for two, three or four of something and then genitive plural case for five or more of something.

Even if it isn't quite a separate dual declension, there certainly is the gramatical awareness of a one/few/many distinction.

Interestingly we use the genitive case in English with collective designations: pair of shoes, herd of cattle, school of fish, class of students, etc. etc. Is this a vestige of duality from proto-Germanic?

I put {{tl:Confusing}} under "Slavic languages". The section now discusses two quite unrelated forms of dual (paucal?):

• AFAIK, all Slavic languages (except Bulgarian and Macedonian) use singular genitive forms with numbers 2-4 and plural genitive for 5+ (Slovenian, in addition, pure dual). That should be mentioned as a common characteristics and an example put inside a table covering all/most relevant languages.
• Other remnants, as with "two eyes" described separately for languages where they're preserved. I did't understand the previous Serbo-Croatian reference to instrumental form, without the example, and I commented it out.

Duja 13:39, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Now, please help me fill in the table, so that we could put it in the article. I selected "wolf" for the reason that it has distinctive pl. and. sg. genitive in Serbo-Croatian (unlike many others). If someone has a better example, it's welcome. Duja 13:39, 16 February 2006 (UTC):

	English	Eastern	Western			South
		Russian	Polish	Czech	Slovak	Slovenian	Serbo-Croatian
singular	1 wolf	1 волк	?	?	?	1 volk	1 vuk
plural (without number)	wolves	волки	?	?	?	volkovi	vukovi
dual (2-4)	2 wolves	2 волкa	?	?	?	2 volkova 3,4 volkovi	2 vuka
plural (with number)	5 wolves	5 волков	?	?	?	5 volkov	5 vukova

Slovenian: Volk (= engl. "wolf")

I'm not sure what you mean by "dual (2-4)"? Slovenian, which uses the grammatical dual in full, uses it only for the number two:

1 volk (grammatical singular)

2 volkova (grammatical dual)

3 volkovi (grammatical plural)

4 volkovi (grammatical plural)

5 volkov (grammatical plural)

7 volkov (grammatical plural)

8 volkov (grammatical plural)

...and so on...

Without a preceding number, it's "volk" (singular), "volkova" (dual), "volkovi" (plural). Conversationally, "volka" is often used in place of "volkova", but, once again, only for the true dual (not numbers 3-4) WorldWide Update 23:53, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Right, I forgot that Slovenian has pure dual. I'll put that in the table.Duja 14:49, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks/hvala! You got it right. WorldWide Update 23:41, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Still, plural 5+ is not so simple. For 101, 102; 201, 202, ...; 1001, 1002, etc. is similar as in 1 and 2. Besides, for dual it is much more common to correct into dva volka. Ziga 19:36, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

---

I would like to point out a couple of inaccuracies:

Slovene "očesa" pushed out "oči" instead, becoming the proper dual (and plural) of "oko").

This is somewhat inaccurate, and the situation is a bit more complicated in practice. The dual and plural form is "oči" when referring to human or animal eyes, and "očesi" (dual) / "očesa" (plural) when referring to other eye-like things.

Nominative case of noun "city": singular: 1 mesto dual: 2 mesti plural: 3-4 mesta, 5+ mest

"mest" is not the nominative case of anything -- it's the plural genitive. In Slovenian, the plural genitive is used instead of the plural nominative if the number of things (modulo 100) is 5 or more. 212.235.208.154 07:50, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Merger with Grammatical Number?

I had proposed to merge this page with grammatical number. I think there is information here that could just as well be on the other page. However, I withdrew the suggestion, since I can't commit to this edit right now. :( FilipeS 13:08, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

On second thoughts, this article is probably too large to be merged with grammatical number. FilipeS 19:48, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Examples

I added the examples from german wikipedia. I didn't really understand the bit about the adoption of plural form in Austro-Bavarian, though, so i may have translated it incorrectly.

Slovene

Grammatical number

The following was in the main article on grammatical number, but I have decided to delete it (see here). I think it's more appropriate for this article, for the reasons explained in the other Talk page. However, since it seems to contain some inaccuracies (see here), I thought it would be better to leave it here, so that it would be corrected by someone who knows Slovene, and added to this article.

Slovene, a Slavic language, is more complicated:

• Barva (a color) (singular), barvi (two colors) (dual), barve (three or four colors), barv (five and so on)
• Hiša (house) (singular), hiši (two houses) (dual), hiše (three or four houses) (plural), hiš (five or more houses) (plural)
• Miš (mouse) (singular), miši (two or more mice) (dual := plural)
• Jaz (I) (singular), midva/midve (we) (dual + [Masculine/Feminine gender]), mi/me (we) (plural [Ma/Fe gender])
• Vrata (one door) (singular), dvoje vrat (two doors) (dual), troje vrat (three doors) (plural), [plural noun with different or same form]
• babine (one afterbirth period) (archaic word) (singular), babini (two afterbirth periods) (dual), babine (three or four afterbirth periods) [plural noun with different or same form], babin (five or more afterbirth periods)
• Človeštvo (mankind) (singular), človeštvi (two mankind) (dual), človeštva (three or four mankind), človeštev (five or more mankind) [collective noun with different form]

Note:

• When a number reaches one hundred and one (two) (or several hundred or thousand and so on), singular and dual are used again. (ena knjiga (one book) (singular),dve knjigi (two books) (dual), pet knjig (five books) (plural), sto ena knjiga (101 books) sto dve knjigi(102 books))

• These and similar examples are very often used incorrectly, even in published or electronic dictionaries.

FilipeS 14:26, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Imperative

My opinion is that the given example for imperative "hoditi (to walk)" is an unlucky one. And that is probably the reason why people continue trying to add the first person indicative form 'hodim'. I would suggest an imperative "pojdi (go)" with the table

	Singular	Dual	Plural
First Person		pojdiva	pojdimo
Second Person	pojdi	pojdita	pojdite

and hopefully nobody will try to add the first person indicative form 'pojdem'.

Dual in Slavic

It is inappropriate to talk about a "dual" (or even "paucal") number in Slavic languages other than Slovenian. The article claims that BCS and Russian have a dual, but (i) it is only used with the numerals 2-3-4 and (ii) it is identical to the genitive singular. In fact, it is the genitive singular, not a dual form. For example, Rus. "волкa" cannot be used by itself (say, as the subject of a verb) to mean "2, 3, or 4 wolves"; you have to use "волки" and it just means "wolves (plural)". Moreover there are no special verb forms for agreeing with a dual/paucal subject (as there are in Slovenian); there are only singular and plural verbs. Historically, there might be a connection between the special syntax of 2-3-4 and the lost dual (I have no idea), but the current article makes a much stronger claim.

Numeral phrase syntax in Slavic is very complex and probably deserves an article of its own. The discussion of the dual in Slavic in this article should really only focus on Slovenian, and mention lexical vestiges of old duals in some plural forms (hands, eyes, ears) in the other languages.

CapnPrep 16:49, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I was a bit surprised to see that the Slovene dual is, in comparison to other Slavic languages, seriosly downplayed - Slovene (along with Sorbic) is afterall the only Slavic language that retains an actual grammatical dual, unlike those other Slavic languages, where some partial vestiges of it remain at best. For starters, I'll move Slovene to the top of the Slavic languages and try to make something out of it's section. Unfortuantely, grammar is not my strong point, so any further help would be more than appreciated. TomorrowTime 09:31, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok, some observations.

-I realise the list of Slavic languages was meant to be alphabetic and my pushing Slovene up to the top will no doubt disturb some deep cosmic harmony, but I think Slovene more than deserves to be first on the list.

-The Sorbian language, one of the three Indo-European langauges with a surviving full dual is not even mentioned. What gives?

-The Slovene entry has been considerably shortened. By me. The ridiculous petty assertions in the oh-so-numerous brackets have been either deleted or moved into the text. No brackets, just freedom!

-I hereby proclaim that I find the adjective "Slovene" to be better sounding than the adjective "Slovenian". Anybody who would want to hang me for high treason because of this should please discuss that here, not in the article. No brackets, just freedom!

-Is there any rule to how examples should be given? I wouldn't mind giving more examples of words and their dual forms, but I'm not sure how to go about this. In fact, all in all this whole article could do with some standardisation - as it is, every language entry is written differently, and it's hard to read.

That's all, folks. TomorrowTime 10:00, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

I deleted the irrelevant sections on Russian and BCS and part of the Ukrainian. If someone can demonstrate (with references) that the use of the gen. sing. with 2-3-4 has anything to do with dual number, this should be discussed as a general Slavic feature, not repeated for every Slavic language individually (the discussion in #Duals in Russian and English above is worth reviving). I salvaged one of the tables for use with Slovene, but I don't know the bare plural form of mesto. CapnPrep 01:25, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Great, looks better already. As for mesto... Hm, the bare plural in nominative would be mesta - this is then inflected for other cases, of course, but I'm not sure if we should go into such details at this stage of the development of the article.

Mesto is a neutral noun. I suppose examples of a feminine and masculine noun would be in order here. In trying to keep up with the general architectural feeling I propose the following nouns: cesta (road) for feminine form and dimnik (chimney) for masculine. So: cesta (sing), cesti (dual), cest (3-4), cest (5+), ceste (bare plural, nominative); dimnik (sing), dimnika (dual), dimniki (3-4), dimnikov (5+), dimniki (bare plural, nom).

Are the above examples ok? I can always help out with further examples or minor clarifications, but I must confess that grammatical explanations are not my forte. You know how it is with native speakers and grammar :) TomorrowTime 09:52, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Ukrainian

I have just deleted the following section:

====Ukrainian====

Ukrainian dialects (e.g., of the Vinnytsya region) have preserved the dual in feminine nouns: кімната - дві кімнаті - шість кімнат (a room - two rooms - six rooms); рука - дві руці - сім рук (a hand - two hands - seven hands) and in neutral nouns: відро - дві відрі - десять відер (a bucket - two buckets - ten buckets). Verbs have completely lost their dual forms.

In essence, the same is true about Ukrainian and Russian languages overall, not just this dialect. There is a difference between the plural forms for a) two objects and b) five or six or seven objects, but that doesn't make a) a dual. See discussion above. Is the form a) not applicable to three or four objects? Why is there no example that shows that this dialect is any different in this respect? If there were one, it would need to be verified. Sergivs-en 18:14, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I believe the claim is that the form of the noun used with 2-3-4 is distinct from the genitive singular for feminine and neuter nouns. This would be then different from standard Ukrainian (and Russian). But the information would have to be verified (and the text above rewritten, so I agree with your deletion). CapnPrep 21:48, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Rewrite

Somme comments on the recent rewrite of this section (which I like, overall):

• What are the "dual characteristics" of the declension of two that "can be verified" in the first table?
• There is no single rule for 2-3-4 in the modern Slavic languages that have lost the dual. The article currently suggests that in all of these languages, the genitive singular form of the noun is used to form a nominative NP. This is not true, for example, in Polish, where the nominative plural is used. This rule is also inappropriate for Southern Slavic languages with no case morphology.
• The "five and above" rule needs to mention higher numerals that end in 1 or 2-3-4 (e.g. twenty-one through twenty-four). Again, there is no single rule valid for all non-dual Slavic languages.
• This section should be moved into a separate article; it is completely out of proportion with the other languages and language families treated.

CapnPrep 22:11, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Declension table

I still don't get the significance of the table enumerating the inflectional forms of "two" in more and more Slavic languages. If the claim is that the declension pattern of "two" and "both" displays specific dual characteristics, this has to be shown in comparison to typical paradigms for other numerals and quantifiers. And then, is it necessary to do this for a dozen languages? CapnPrep 12:26, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Since this is a section on the dual in the Slavic languages, I think that the dual forms in each of the Slavic languages should be mentioned. However, it may be more appropriate to place this section as its own article, where a complete listing can be given. The forms in this section would then be shorten to a respresentative sample (say Russian, Polish, Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian, and Sorbic) with a comparison between the singlular, plural, and dual endings. Woollymammoth 02:26, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Remnants of dual in Czech

In Czech, although there is no dual as such, the plural forms of some nouns indicating things which naturally come in pairs (mainly paired organs e.g. eyes / ears) have a different declension from "normal" plurals - these even affects the adjectives which describe them (interesting that it is apparently the other way round in Slovene).

As pointed out in the previous contribution, this should not be confused with the use of the genitive singular for numbers of 5 or more, which is common to most (all?) Slavic languages. This is due to the way numbers 1-4 behave like adjectives, whereas other expressions of quantity behave like nonus.

Dual and Genitive

To clarify: Slavic languages use the genitive ("of" form) of nouns in connection with most expressions of quantity EXCEPT the numbers 1-4. Thus the expression for "five beers" literally translates as "a five of beers". The use of the dual in Slovene, or remnants of this form in other languages, is a separate issue.

Taking beer as the example, the Czech is: 1 pivo (singular), 2 piva (plural), 3 piva (plural), 4 piva (plural), 5 piv (genitive plural). In Slovene, I believe it would be 1 pivo (singular), 2 pivi (dual), 3 piva (plural), 4 piva (plural), 5 piv (genitive plural).

I apologise if I've got the Slovene examples wrong, but the principle still applies.

You got the Slovene examples right. While in Slovene "five beer" would only roughly (hardly) translate as "a five of beers" it is still true that for 5-and-above the genetive plural form is used. I think this explanation with genetive plural form removes all concerns about implication of more than three (singular, dual, plural) numbers. I might be talking about 10 bears or general plural of bears and I would still say "Medvedje so v kleti." (Bears are in the basement!) and still Five bears in the basement. would be Pet medvedov je v kleti.. Beers might not be such good example, because we would much rather like to talk about beer as a mass of liquid (Pivo je v kleti - Beer is in the basement). 222.152.244.105 13:31, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Pair

English utterly lacks a dual, but the semantic issues involved with pairs is interesting. Fashionistas insist on calling it a pant or jean, but they are pants and jeans. In fact, all garments that begin about the waist and extend somewhat around the thighs take the plural: pants, trousers, jeans, boxers, shorts, pantalettes, coulottes, etc.

Compare this to bikini, brief, panty hose (hose is an interesting word). If the garment does not enclose the thigh, it's singular. But notice that whitie-tighties (even though a white cotton male brief) is apparently plural.

The article mentions modern Hebrew. Stereo speakers are spoken of in the dual, along with headlights and eyeglasses. These are natural pairs, as with shoes and gloves. There is the issue of chirality (a bad article). --MarkTwainOnIce 06:55, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

English still retains some use of the dual, and even the trial number, in the use of occasion: e.g. once, twice, thrice, four times, five times etc, Lobbuss 10:46, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Is it really a dual and trial? I guess they are just numerals, aren't they? Adam J. Sporka 10:23, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the dual number is not the same thing as the number two, is it?

I guess it depends on how one defines "grammatical number". Is it just a matter of which quantity you're talking about, or is it a systematic inflection? Traditionally, the term "dual" has been used only in highly synthetic languages that have inflections associated with each number, where hundreds to thousands of words inflect in similar ways to show number. I don't suppose that English does this... FilipeS 12:20, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Splitting off the Dual in the Slavic Languages as a separate article

As has been mentioned by others above, I would propose that the section "Dual in the Slavic Languages" be split off as a separate article. A short summary of the Slavic dual should be presented, along with a section on both Slovenian and Sorbic, which have maintained the dual. It would be nice to include the forms for the verbs as well. Woollymammoth 02:29, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Latin

I remember from high school Latin that the pre-Golden Age (pre-Virgil) Latin had a dual. I'll look it up, and then work up a section. Has anyone else heard this? samwaltz 22:14, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

• Some languages have a "dual" category, of which Latin has only vestiges, e.g. ambo, duo, where the long -o- is an Indo-European dual. [1]
• The form in -o is a remnant of the dual number, which was lost in Latin, [2]

I'm looking for more. Two lines saying that the dual died out in Latin... well, it's just not enough for my taste. samwaltz 22:35, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

The Latin twenty is spelled diviginti in the article, though it's most often spelled viginti. I'm unsure of the dual grammatical form diviginti is attempting explain. I wonder if this is a conflation of duo de viginti (2 from 20 or eighteen), and the point made juxtaposed with triginta. The link supports my question or guess explaining the possible confusion. [3] User:tgm8 —Preceding undated comment added 22:22, 21 October 2010 (UTC).

• Wiktionary has excellent explanation [4] User:tgm8

The word diviginti seemed to be just a mistake. I have changed it to viginti. Burzuchius (talk) 15:57, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Hebrew transcriptions

The Hebrew words are transcribed using Ashkenazic pronunciation, even when the text refers to the language "as spoken in the State of Israel". --Smack (talk) 18:50, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

English: inappropriate example

English has words distinguishing dual vs. plural number, including: both/all, between/among, latter/last, either/any, and neither/none. Japanese, which has no grammatical number, also has words dochira (which of the two) and dore (which of the three or more), etc.

CapnPrep spent a long time over at the grammatical gender article getting it through my thick skull that the instances of gender inflection in English are so insignificant that they're not enough to say that English has grammatical genders. I quite agree. But exactly the same is true of so-called "duals" in English. In short: English doesn't really have dual number. FilipeS 14:30, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

If we mention Swedish begge, we have to mention English both for the same reason: it's a dual-like construction. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 14:39, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Then we can mention Croatian oba/obje and tons of such expressions that can be found for almost any language. This has little to do with the actual grammatical dual. Admiral Norton ^(talk) 17:21, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

If the "both/all" distinction is verifiably common even in languages without dual, reporting on this distinction in the general case might be worth it. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 02:15, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I suppose this would fall under the same category, twice vs. <number> times? What about thrice? 86.61.97.254 (talk) 20:05, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Japanese: dochira is not dual

As far as I understand, dochira is not necessarily "which of the two", it's just "which way". The set of possible answers has three options: Kochira (this way, near me), sochira (that way, near you), achira (that way, over there). Jpatokal (talk) 06:52, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. After putting on my thinking hat and checking WWWJDIC's examples, I'll amend that: dochira can mean "which of two", but it does not necessarily mean that there are only two options:

どちらに御泊りですか。 [T]

Where are you staying? (= infinite options)

紅茶とコーヒーではどちらの方が好きですか。 [T]

Which do you like better, tea or coffee? (= precisely two options)

But you couldn't say "tea or coffee or juice" using dochira in the second sentence. Jpatokal (talk) 06:58, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

The Japanese example is misleading. "Dochira" is part of the ko/so/a/do set with "kochira" and "sochira" and "achira", which are all terms relating to *direction*. That being "this way" (towards speaker) / "that way" (away from speaker) / "the previously mentioned way" (a definite/indefinite distinction) / "which way" respectively. I've heard NS use "dochi" for more than two ("dochi" just being a contraction) and "dore" for two, as well.

I'm very suspicious of this. As far as I know, Japanese has little noun inflection. It doesn't even have grammatical number as a morphological category, so how can it have a dual? FilipeS (talk) 12:09, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Bulgarian

This has been recently added to the article:

Bulgarian The loss of the dual led to the creation of the numerical plural form (broyna mnozhestvena forma) in the masculine, which follows all numbers, as well as several words like kolko (how many) and nyakolko (several)

stol (chair) → mnogo stolove (many chairs) → dva stola (two chairs)

I must admit I'm having trouble making out what this is supposed to mean. Could somebody more knowledgable work on it and make it more understandble? TomorrowTime (talk) 08:03, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

• It's the distinction, found in many Slavic languages, that numbers 'two', 'three', and 'four' use nominative plural while numbers five and greater use genitive plural. In Czech: jeden stůl (one table) - dva stoly (two tables) - pět stolů (five tables, literally: a five of tables). Indefinite numbers - 'mnoho' (many), 'několik' (several), 'kolik' (how many), 'tolik' (so many), and the like - also use genitive plural. - Mike Rosoft (talk) 20:10, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

The dual in the Slavic languages

The table should be changed to have a single column for each case, since there is no genitive-locative parallel in some languages, like Croatian. Admiral Norton ^(talk) 20:42, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

And the Czech row is wrong. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.179.235.249 (talk) 23:24, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Probably the last official use of dual number in a living Indo-European language

http://lt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaizdas:2_LT_1925_A.png

The picture shows a 1925 Lithuanian 2 Litas coin with the inscription in dual.

The modern version has the inscription already in plural: /media/wikipedia/commons/5/56/2_litai_coin_%281997%29.jpg

If you find this interesting and appropriate, please insert the pictures into the article and edit the text as seems fit. I'm new to Wikipedia editing, sorry. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.59.224.136 (talk) 20:30, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Sorry to disappoint you, but the dual is alive and kicking in Slovene, a major living Indo-European language. In fact, here's a picture of a 1993 Slovenian 2 tolar coin with the dual: [5] (compare with the singular 1 tolar [6] and the plural 5 tolars [7]. TomorrowTime (talk) 23:53, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Slovene

The part on Slovene dual gives too much weight on one study and is generally a confused mass of different things: language development from Old Church Slavic to Slovenian, situation in Standard Literary Slovenian, and situations in spokene Slovene and dialects.

Section should be cleared up by most importantly describing first Standard Literary Slovenian, which employes complete dual system (which by the way doesn't mean "same as in Old Church Slavic", but "fully within the bounds of the grammar, i.e. with nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, etc...). Then can be mentioned separately dialects and dialectal studies, spoken Slovene, etc, and processes there can be described. Statments about the development of dual should be removed and placed in another section higher in the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.201.212.157 (talk) 14:09, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Those who understand the Slovene conjugations of the verbs in Singular, Dual and Plural can understand the conjugations in Rig Vedic sanskrit. This is the reason why there was no "1 common Slavic language (often transliterated through later artifical Church (post "pagan") Slavic language) for example, the verb "to be". Here I want to show you why the Slovene (through the dialects and written down as modern literal language) preserved antique Rig Vedic conjugations in Dual.

Sanskrit:

Singular: asmi, asi, asti. Dual: svah, sthah, stah. Plural: smah, stha, santi.

Slovene:

Singular: sem, si, je(probably transmuted from osti - jest; "he is") Dual: sva, sta, sta Plural: smo, ste, so. (in german remained as sind; from santi).

Another example of the verb to float / to swim:

Sanskrit:

Singular: plavami, plavaši, plavati. Dual: plavamah, , plavathah, plavatah. Plural: plavamah, plavatah, plavanti.

Slovene:

Singular: plavam, plavaš, plava. Dual: plavava, plavata, plavata. Plural: plavamo, plavate, plavajo.

Dual in Irish

Hi,

I'm not a linguist so I'm not sure the following information counts as "fully functioning as a paradigmatic category". In Munster Irish feminine nouns have a dual form. The nominative dual is the same in form as the dative singular and the genitive dual is the same in form as the genitive plural. The adjective qualifying the noun uses the plural form, there is no dual form for adjectives. I don't know of a reference in English, but in Irish: Diarmuid Ó Sé "Gaeilge Chorca Dhuibhne", p.223. AnSpideogDhubh (talk) 22:06, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

This is not only the case in Munster, though in the other dialects (and the Caighdeán), only a limited number of nouns (all parts of the body) have separate dual forms: dhá láimh, dhá chois, dhá chluais (as opposed to the singulars lámh, cos, cluas). Kokoshneta (talk) 15:38, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Choice of the word for "wolf" as an example

I feel it was a bad idea to choose the word for "wolf" as an example in the various Slavic languages, because it raises other, irrelevant issues in what is already a complicated matter. First, the Polish word "wilk" turns out have a second, irregular plural form "wilcy", which is in any case marked as "rare" - so it could surely have been omitted here, since it has nothing to do with the dual, which is after all the subject of this article. Second, the Slovene word "volk" is one of only a small number of masculine nouns that form their plural and dual with the infixed syllable '-ov-' - most masculine nouns simply add '-i' for the plural and '-a' for the dual, but 'volk' just happens to become 'volkovi' and 'volkova' rather than 'volki' and 'volka', another irrelevant issue that can only confuse the struggling learner. Not knowing all the languages involved as well as I do Russian and Slovene, I can't think off-hand of a better example that would not raise similarly irrelevant issues somewhere, and of course you need to find a word that's almost the same in all of them. But I'm sure a competent Slavicist could find something suitable.188.230.248.85 (talk) 13:56, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

The Hebrew dual is obscure for lack of vowel pointing

Article says: "An example of the dual form is יום / יומים / ימים‬ yōm / yomạyim / yāmīm "day / two days / [two or more] days". Some words occur so often in pairs that the form with the dual suffix -ạyim . . . ."

The first sentence above is very obtuse. Can someone clarify it? Was it not technically possible to write those Hebrew words with vowel pointing? It looks like the writer is saying that the dual form uses a holem vav instead of mere holem; which surely is not his meaning. I am thinking it should be stated that the dual morpheme is now an assumption which was not written originally. We are assuming that there was a dual pronounced differently from the plural, marked by the centuries later vowel pointing system, none of which was in the original. I am thinking that to make this statement clear, a pathach has to be inserted to show the dual, as with יוֹמַ֫יִם

(PeacePeace (talk) 04:19, 12 January 2019 (UTC))