Number: number
| Values: | Coll | Plur | Ptan | Sing |
In Middle Armenian, Number is a feature of nouns and other parts of speech that mark agreement with nouns, i.e. personal pronouns and verbs.
Sing: singular number
A singular noun denotes one person, animal, or thing.
Examples:
- գրաստ/grast “beast of burden”
- մանուկ/manuk “child”
- ծառայ/çaṙay “servant”
- տուն/town “house”
Pronouns that refer to a single person, animal, or thing are also marked with this feature.
- Ես/es “I”
- իմ/im “my”
- դու/du “you”
- քո/k’o “your”
- ինք/ink’ “he/she/it”
- իւր(իր)/iwr(ir) “his/her/its”
Demonstrative pronouns referring to singular entities are marked with this feature, whereas demonstrative determiners are not, regardless of whether the modified noun is singular or plural (e.g. այս դեղս/ays deġs “this medicine”; այս դեղերն/ays deġern “these medicines” այդ երկիրն/ayd erkirn “that country (medial)”, այդ պռկունքդ/ayd pṙkownkʼd “those your lips”).
- սա/sa “this”
- դա/da “that (medial)”
- նա/na “that”
- այն/ayn “that, it”
Plur: plural number
A plural noun denotes several persons, animals or things. Middle Armenian has several plural suffixes, including -ք/k’, -եր/-er, -եար/-ear, -ան/-an, -նի/-ni, -տի/-ti, -վի/-vi, -վտի/-vti, -ստան/-stan, -ներ/ner etc.
Examples:
- գրաստնի/grastni “beasts of burden”
- մանկտի/mankti “children”
- ծառայք/çaṙayk’ “servants”
- տներ/tner “houses”
Pronouns that refer to several persons, animals or things are also marked with this feature.
- մեք/mek’ “we”
- մեր/mer “our”
- դուք/duk’ “you (pl.)”
- ձեր/jer “yours (pl.)”
- իրենք/irenk’ “they”
- իրենց (իրանց, իւրեանց, իւրենց)/irenc’ (iranc’, iwreanc’, iwrenc’) “their”
- սոքա/sok’a “these”
- դոքա/dok’a “those (medial)”
- նոքա/nok’a “those”
- այնոք/aynok’ “those”
Demonstrative pronouns referring to plural entities are marked with this feature, whereas demonstrative determiners are not, regardless of whether the modified noun is singular or plural (see above).
Ptan: plurale tantum
Some geographical or biological/botanical names appear only in the plural form even though they denote one thing (semantic singular). These proper nouns are marked as Ptan (plurale tantum). Grammatically they behave like singulars, so Ptan is obviously the back-off value here.
Examples
- արծուիք/arçowik’ “ascites”
- երանք/erank’ “loins”
- մեղանք/meġank’ “wickedness”
Coll: collective / mass / singulare tantum
Collective or mass or singulare tantum is a special case of singular. It applies to words that use grammatical singular to describe sets of objects, i.e. semantic plural. Although in Armenian they are able to form plural, in practice the plural form means “several sorts of” or “several packages of”. We mark these forms as Plur.
Examples:
- դահութիւն/dahowt’iwn “old age”
- խիփ/xip’ “shame, reverence”
- պօղպատ/pòġpat “steel”
Number in other languages: [ab] [arr] [axm] [bej] [bg] [bm] [bor] [cs] [ctn] [cy] [el] [en] [es] [ess] [eu] [fi] [fr] [ga] [gn] [gub] [hbo] [hu] [hy] [it] [ka] [ky] [myv] [naq] [oge] [orv] [pal] [pcm] [ps] [pt] [qpm] [ru] [sl] [sv] [tpn] [tr] [tt] [u] [uk] [urb] [urj] [xcl] [xmf]