Paucal

Abstract

The paucal is described here as a bound number grammeme, historically derived from the dual and present in modern Russian, Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian and Molise Slavic. The article gives an overview of the definition and the distribution of the paucal in Slavic, as well as its grammatical status and its historical development. Special chapters deal with the paucal in nouns, attributes, predicates, and in oblique cases in the three languages under consideration. TERMINOLOGY AND DEFINITIONThe paucal (< La paucus 'few'), required by the numerals '2, 3, 4' and 'both', may be considered a grammeme of the category of →number, with singular and plural as its counterparts, just like the →dual, from which it is historically derived. Alternative terms are Ge Numerativ (Isačenko 1962), Ru <onl>счётная форма</onl> sčëtnaja forma (Vinogradov 1972, Zaliznjak 2002 or Sr <onl>мала множина</onl> mala množina (Piper 2005 ~ <onl>паукал</onl> paukal), Cr malina (Znika 2002 ~ paukal), En restricted plural (Corbett 2000 ~ paucal). The terms dvojina and dual, frequent in BCMS handbooks for the paucal, are misleading.In opposition to the singular, the dual, just like the paucal, refers to more than one referent, but not to a larger quantity like the plural. In modern Slavic languages, the paucal and the dual are mutually exclusive, with the paucal referring to two-four referents and the dual to just two. In historical times, however, variation between these two numbers and even with the (unmarked) plural was not excluded (Žolobov and Krys'ko 2001). Other languages of the world either have a reduced inventory or show even more number grammemes like a trial, a greater plural etc. or no number category at all (Corbett 2000: 22-53). DISTRIBUTION OF THE PAUCAL IN SLAVICIn the modern Slavic standard languages, the paucal is found only in →Russian and in the →BCMS standard varieties, whereas the →Čakavian (bound dual) and the →Kajkavian (only plural) dialect are different (Belić 1972: 54-57). In contrast, →Molise Slavic (MSL), a Slavic micro-language in southern Italy, has preserved a paucal in its grammatical system, too, despite very strong Romance influences in other fields of grammar during the last 500 years (Breu 2017). MSL has the same genetic roots as BCMS, but on a →Štokavian-Ikavian dialectal basis. In →Bulgarian and →Macedonian a still wider expansion of the original dual took place, including not only the numerals '3-4', but all numbers, thus transforming it not to a paucal but to Bg <onl>бройна</onl> brojna / Mk <onl>избројана форма</onl> izbrojana forma 'enumerative form' as a third (bound) number grammeme besides singular and plural, except for nouns referring to persons (