Number: number
| Values: | Assoc | Coll | Plur | Sing |
In Classical Armenian, Number is an inflectional feature of nouns(including proper nouns), pronouns, adjectives, determiners, numerals, and declinable impersonal forms of verbs and auxiliaries.
In Classical Armenian, adjectival modifiers show only partial agreement with nominals in number. As a rule of thumb, they show the agreement in postposition but not in preposition. Common exceptions are monosyllabic adjectives (e.g. միւս/miws “another”), which typically agree with modified nominals in oblique cases also in preposition. Predicative adjectives typically do not agree with the subject in number when they immediately precede the verb. Participles tend to agree with the subject in number in the adjectival function but not in the predicative one. Possessive, relative, indefinite and interrogative determiners tend not to agree in number in the nominative, accusative, and locative, but do agree in other cases both in preposition and postposition. Declinable demonstrative determiners tend to always agree with the head in number (see further details in Meillet 1962).
Cardinal numerals from 2 to 4 are always in the plural. Starting from 5 they show a partial agreement with the head like adjectives. Nominals modified by cardinal numerals from 2 to 4 are typically in the plural. Starting from 5, the nominal can be either in the singular or plural. Nominals following an ordinal numeral are typically in the singular.
In contrast to Modern Eastern Armenian, the present annotation does not distinguish the associative plural and collective singular, which are formally expressed by the plural and singular forms, respectively.
Sing: singular number
A singular form denotes one entity.
Examples:
- տուն/town “house”
Plur: plural number
A plural form can denote several entities, collective entity or an abstract notion.
Examples:
- տունք/townkʻ “houses”
- միտք/mitkʻ “mind”
- մաւրուք/mawrukʻ “beard”
References
Առաքելեան, Վարագ. 2010. Գրաբարի քերականութիւն. Երևան: Վիամիր․ [Araqelian, Varag. 2010. Grammar of Grabar. Yerevan: Viamir]
Jensen, Hans. 1959. Altarmenische Grammatik. Heidelberg: Winter.
Meillet, Antoine. 1913. Altarmenisches Elementarbuch. Heidelberg: Winters (Internet Archive).
Meillet, Antoine. 1962. Études de linguistique et de philologie arméniennes. I. Recherches sur la syntaxe comparée de l’arménien. Lisbonne: Imprensa nacional de Lisboa.
Number in other languages: [ab] [arr] [bej] [bg] [bm] [bor] [cs] [cy] [el] [en] [es] [ess] [eu] [fi] [fr] [ga] [gn] [gub] [hbo] [hu] [hy] [it] [ka] [ky] [myv] [orv] [pcm] [ps] [pt] [qpm] [ru] [sl] [sv] [tpn] [tr] [tt] [u] [uk] [urb] [urj] [xcl]