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Dual ( abbreviated ) is a
grammatical number In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one", "two" or "three or more"). English and other languages present number categories of ...
that some languages use in addition to singular and
plural The plural (sometimes list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical number, grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the ...
. When a noun or pronoun appears in dual form, it is interpreted as referring to precisely two of the entities (objects or persons) identified by the noun or pronoun acting as a single unit or in unison. Verbs can also have dual agreement forms in these languages. The dual number existed in
Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo ...
and persisted in many of its descendants, such as
Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic pe ...
and
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural diffusion ...
, which have dual forms across nouns, verbs, and adjectives,
Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
, which used dual forms in pronouns and verbs, and
Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th ...
(Anglo-Saxon), which used dual forms in its pronouns. It can still be found in a few modern Indo-European languages such as Irish,
Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic ( gd, Gàidhlig ), also known as Scots Gaelic and Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well as ...
, Lithuanian, Slovene, and
Sorbian languages The Sorbian languages ( hsb, serbska rěč, dsb, serbska rěc) are the Upper Sorbian language and Lower Sorbian language, two closely related and partially mutually intelligible languages spoken by the Sorbs, a West Slavic ethno-cultural min ...
. The majority of modern Indo-European languages, including modern English, however, have lost dual through their development and only show residual traces of it. In all these languages, its function has mostly been replaced by simple plurals, although the remnants are evident in the
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...
distinctions: ''both'' vs. ''all'', ''either'' vs. ''any'', ''neither'' vs. ''none'', and so on. A commonly used sentence to exemplify dual in English is "''Both go to the same school.''" where ''both'' refers to two specific people who had already been determined in the conversation. Many
Semitic languages The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigrant ...
also have dual numbers. For instance, in Hebrew - () or a variation of it is added to the end of some nouns, e.g. some parts of the body (eye, ear, nostril, lip, hand, leg) and some time periods (minute, hour, day, week, month, year) to indicate that it is dual (regardless of how the plural is formed). A similar situation exists in classical Arabic, where is added to the end of any noun to indicate that it is dual (regardless of how the plural is formed). It is also present in those Khoisan languages that have a rich inflectional morphology, particularly
Khoe languages The Khoi languages are the largest of the non-Bantu language families indigenous to Southern Africa. They were once considered to be a branch of a Khoisan language family, and were known as Central Khoisan in that scenario. Though Khoisan is ...
.


Comparative characteristics

Many languages make a distinction between singular and
plural The plural (sometimes list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical number, grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the ...
: English, for example, distinguishes between ''man'' and ''men'', or ''house'' and ''houses''. In some
language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...
s, in addition to such singular and plural forms, there is also a dual form, which is used when exactly two people or things are meant. In many languages with dual forms, the use of the dual is mandatory as in some Arabic dialects using dual in nouns as in Hejazi Arabic, and the plural is used only for groups greater than two. However, the use of the dual is optional in some languages such as other modern Arabic dialects including
Egyptian Arabic Egyptian Arabic, locally known as Colloquial Egyptian ( ar, العامية المصرية, ), or simply Masri (also Masry) (), is the most widely spoken vernacular Arabic dialect in Egypt. It is part of the Afro-Asiatic language family, and ...
. In other languages such as
Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
, the dual exists only for words naming time spans (day, week, etc.), a few measure words, and for words that naturally come in pairs and are not used in the plural except in rhetoric: eyes, ears, and so forth. In Slovene, the use of the dual is mandatory except for nouns that are natural pairs, such as trousers, eyes, ears, lips, hands, arms, legs, feet, kidneys, breasts, lungs, etc., for which the plural form has to be used unless one wants to stress that something is true for both one and the other part. For example, one says ('my eyes hurt'), but if they want to stress that both their eyes hurt, they say . When using the pronoun / ('both'), the dual form that follows is mandatory. Although relatively few languages have the dual number, using different words for groups of two and groups greater than two is not uncommon.
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...
has words distinguishing dual vs. plural number, including: ''both''/''all'', ''either''/''any'', ''neither''/''none'', ''between''/''among'', ''former''/''first'', and ''latter''/''last''. Japanese, which has no grammatical number, also has words (, 'which of the two') and (, 'which of the three or more'), etc.


Use in modern languages

Among living languages,
Modern Standard Arabic Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) or Modern Written Arabic (MWA), terms used mostly by linguists, is the variety of standardized, literary Arabic that developed in the Arab world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; occasionally, it also re ...
has a mandatory dual number, marked on nouns, verbs, adjectives and pronouns. (First-person dual forms, however, do not exist; compare this to the lack of third-person dual forms in the old Germanic languages.) Many of the spoken Arabic dialects have a dual marking for nouns (only), and its use can be mandatory in some dialects, and not mandatory in others. Likewise,
Akkadian Akkadian or Accadian may refer to: * Akkadians, inhabitants of the Akkadian Empire * Akkadian language, an extinct Eastern Semitic language * Akkadian literature, literature in this language * Akkadian cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo-syllabic ...
had a dual number, though its use was confined to standard phrases like "two hands", "two eyes", and "two arms". The dual in
Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
has also atrophied, generally being used for only time, number, and natural pairs (like body parts) even in its most ancient form. Inuktitut and the related
Central Alaskan Yup'ik language Central is an adjective usually referring to being in the center of some place or (mathematical) object. Central may also refer to: Directions and generalised locations * Central Africa, a region in the centre of Africa continent, also known as ...
use dual forms; however, the related Greenlandic language does not (though it used to have them). Khoekhoegowab and other Khoe languages mark dual number in their person-gender-number
enclitics In morphology and syntax, a clitic (, backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a wo ...
, though the neuter gender does not have a dual form. Austronesian languages, particularly Polynesian languages such as Hawaiian, Niuean and Tongan, possess a dual number for pronouns but not for nouns, as nouns are generally marked for plural syntactically and not morphologically. Other Austronesian languages, particularly those spoken in the Philippines, have a dual first-person pronoun; these languages include Ilokano (), Tausug (), and Kapampangan (). These forms mean "we", but specifically "you and I". This form once existed in
Tagalog Tagalog may refer to: Language * Tagalog language, a language spoken in the Philippines ** Old Tagalog, an archaic form of the language ** Batangas Tagalog, a dialect of the language * Tagalog script, the writing system historically used for Taga ...
( or sometimes ) but has disappeared from standard usage (save for certain dialects such as in
Batangas Batangas, officially the Province of Batangas ( tl, Lalawigan ng Batangas ), is a province in the Philippines located in the Calabarzon region on Luzon. Its capital is the city of Batangas, and is bordered by the provinces of Cavite and L ...
) since the middle of the 20th century, with as the only surviving form (e.g. , loosely "I love you"). The dual was a standard feature of the Proto-Uralic language, and lives on in the Samoyedic languages and in most Sami languages, while other branches like Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian have lost it. The language used by the Sami / Lappish peoples also features dual pronouns, expressing the concept of "we two here" as contrasted to "we". Nenets, two closely related Samoyedic languages, features a complete set of dual possessive suffixes for two systems, the number of possessors and the number of possessed objects (for example, "two houses of us two" expressed in one word). The dual form is also used in several modern Indo-European languages, such as Irish,
Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic ( gd, Gàidhlig ), also known as Scots Gaelic and Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well as ...
, Slovene and Sorbian (see below for details). The dual was a common feature of all early Slavic languages around the year 1000.


Arabic

In
Modern Standard Arabic Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) or Modern Written Arabic (MWA), terms used mostly by linguists, is the variety of standardized, literary Arabic that developed in the Arab world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; occasionally, it also re ...
, as well as in
Classical Arabic Classical Arabic ( ar, links=no, ٱلْعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ, al-ʿarabīyah al-fuṣḥā) or Quranic Arabic is the standardized literary form of Arabic used from the 7th century and throughout the Middle Ages, most notab ...
, the use of dual is compulsory when describing two units. For this purpose, , is added to the end of any noun or adjective regardless of gender or of how the plural is being formed. In the case of feminine nouns ending with , this letter becomes a . When the dual noun or adjective is rendered in the genitive or accusative forms, the becomes . Besides the noun and adjective dual, there are also dual verb forms of compulsory use for second and third person, together with their pronouns, but none for the first person. The use of dual in spoken Arabic varies widely and is mostly rendered a even when in nominative context. Whereas its use is quite common in Levantine Arabic, for instance meaning "two kilograms", dual forms are generally not used in
Maghrebi Arabic Maghrebi Arabic (, Western Arabic; as opposed to Eastern or Mashriqi Arabic) is a vernacular Arabic dialect continuum spoken in the Maghreb region, in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Western Sahara, and Mauritania. It includes Moroccan, Al ...
, where two units are commonly expressed with the word , as in meaning "a pair of kilograms", with the noun appearing in singular.


Hebrew


Biblical and Mishnaic Hebrew

In
Biblical The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of ...
, Mishnaic, and Medieval Hebrew, like
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...
and other
Semitic languages The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigrant ...
, all nouns can have singular, plural or dual forms, and there is still a debate whether there are vestiges of dual verbal forms and pronouns. However, in practice, most nouns use only singular and plural forms. Usually is added to
masculine Masculinity (also called manhood or manliness) is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles associated with men and boys. Masculinity can be theoretically understood as socially constructed, and there is also evidence that some behaviors ...
words to make them plural for example "book / books", whilst with
feminine Femininity (also called womanliness) is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles generally associated with women and girls. Femininity can be understood as socially constructed, and there is also some evidence that some behaviors considered fe ...
nouns the is replaced with . For example, "cow / cows". The masculine dual form is shown in pointed text with a pathach; in a purely consonantal text, masculine dual is not indicated at all by the consonants. The dual for (two) days is with pathach under the mem. An example of the dual form is "day / two days / wo or moredays". Some words occur so often in pairs that the form with the dual suffix is used in practice for the general plural, such as "eye / eyes", used even in a sentence like "The spider has eight eyes." Thus words like only appear to be dual, but are in fact what is called "pseudo-dual", which is a way of making a plural. Sometimes, words can change meaning depending on whether the dual or plural form is used, for example; can mean eye or water spring in the singular, but in the plural eyes will take the dual form of whilst springs are . Adjectives, verbs, and pronouns have only singular and plural, with the plural forms of these being used with dual nouns.


Modern Hebrew

In
Modern Hebrew Modern Hebrew ( he, עברית חדשה, ''ʿivrít ḥadašá ', , '' lit.'' "Modern Hebrew" or "New Hebrew"), also known as Israeli Hebrew or Israeli, and generally referred to by speakers simply as Hebrew ( ), is the standard form of the He ...
as used in
Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
, there is also a dual number, but its use is very restricted. The dual form is usually used in expressions of time and number. These nouns have plurals as well, which are used for numbers higher than two, for example: The pseudo-dual is used to form the plural of some body parts, garments, etc., for instance: :   ("leg") →   ("legs") :   ("ear") →   ("ears") :   ("tooth") →   ("teeth") :   ("intestine") →   ("intestines") :   ("shoe") →   ("shoes") :   ("sock") →   ("socks") In this case, even if there are more than two, the dual is still used, for instance יש לכלב ארבע רגליים ("a dog has four legs"). Another case of the pseudo-dual is ''duale tantum'' (a kind of plurale tantum) nouns: :   (" colon", lit. "two dots") :   ("bicycle", lit. "two wheels") :   ("eyeglasses", lit. "two lenses") :   ("sky") :   ("scissors")


Khoe languages

In Nama, nouns have three
gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most culture ...
s and three
grammatical number In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one", "two" or "three or more"). English and other languages present number categories of ...
s. The non-Khoe Khoesan languages ( Tuu and Kx'a), do not have dual number marking of nouns.


In Indo-European languages

The category of dual can be reconstructed for
Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo ...
, the ancestor of all
Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, D ...
, and it has been retained as a fully functioning category in the earliest attested daughter languages. The best evidence for the dual among ancient Indo-European languages can be found in Old Indo-Iranian ( Vedic Sanskrit and Avestan),
Homeric Greek Homeric Greek is the form of the Greek language that was used by Homer in the '' Iliad'', '' Odyssey'', and Homeric Hymns. It is a literary dialect of Ancient Greek consisting mainly of Ionic, with some Aeolic forms, a few from Arcadocypriot, ...
and Old Church Slavonic, where its use was obligatory for all inflected categories including verbs, nouns, adjectives, pronouns and some numerals. Various traces of dual can also be found in
Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
,
Old Irish Old Irish, also called Old Gaelic ( sga, Goídelc, Ogham script: ᚌᚑᚔᚇᚓᚂᚉ; ga, Sean-Ghaeilge; gd, Seann-Ghàidhlig; gv, Shenn Yernish or ), is the oldest form of the Goidelic/Gaelic language for which there are extensive writte ...
, and Latin (more below). Due to the scarcity of evidence, the reconstruction of dual endings for Proto-Indo-European is difficult, but at least formally according to the comparative method it can be ascertained that no more than three dual endings are reconstructible for nominal inflection. reconstruct the dual endings as: * Nominative/
accusative The accusative case ( abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘ ...
/ vocative: *-h₁(e) * Genitive/ ablative: *-h₁(e) / *-oHs * Dative: *-me / *-OH * Locative: *-h₁ow *
Instrumental An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to inst ...
: *-bʰih₁ The Proto-Indo-European category of dual did not only denote two of something: it could also be used as an associative marker, the so-called ''elliptical dual''. For example, the
Vedic upright=1.2, The Vedas are ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism. Above: A page from the '' Atharvaveda''. The Vedas (, , ) are a large body of religious texts originating in ancient India. Composed in Vedic Sanskrit, the texts constitute th ...
deity Mitrá, when appearing in dual form ''Mitrā́'', refers to both Mitra and his companion Varuṇa. Homeric dual refers to
Ajax the Great Ajax () or Aias (; grc, Αἴας, Aíās , ''Aíantos''; archaic ) is a Greek mythological hero, the son of King Telamon and Periboea, and the half-brother of Teucer. He plays an important role, and is portrayed as a towering figur ...
er and his fighting companion Teucer, and Latin plural is used to denote both the semi-god Castor and his twin brother Pollux. Beside nominal (nouns, adjectives and pronouns), the dual was also present in verbal inflection where the syncretism was much lower. Of living Indo-European languages, the dual can be found in dialects of
Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic ( gd, Gàidhlig ), also known as Scots Gaelic and Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well as ...
, but fully functioning as a paradigmatic category only in Slovene, Sorbian, and the Kajkavian and Chakavian forms of Croatian. Remnants of the dual can be found in many of the remaining daughter languages, where certain forms of the noun are used with the number two (see below for examples).


Sanskrit

The dual is widely used in Sanskrit, as noted above. Its use is mandatory when the number of objects is two, and the plural is not permitted in this case, with one exception (see below). It is always indicated by the declensional suffix (and some morphophonemic modifications to the root resulting from addition of the suffix). For nouns, the dual forms are the same in the following sets of cases, with examples for the masculine noun (boy): * nominative/accusative: bālau * instrumental/dative/ablative: bālābhyām * genitive/locative: bālayoḥ In Sanskrit adjectives are treated the same as nouns as far as case declensions are concerned. As for pronouns, the same rules apply, except for a few special forms used in some cases. Verbs have distinct dual forms in the three persons in both the ātmanepada and parasmaipada forms of verbs. For instance, the root pac meaning "to cook", takes the following forms in the dual number of the present tense, called laṭ lakāra: (Note that in Sanskrit, the order of the persons is reversed.) The one exception to the rigidness about dual number is in the case of the pronoun asmad (I/we): Sanskrit grammar permits one to use the plural number for asmad even if the actual number of objects denoted is one or two (this is similar to the "royal we"). For example, while ''ahaṃ bravīmi'', ''āvāṃ brūvaḥ'' and ''vayaṃ brūmaḥ'' are respectively the singular, dual and plural forms of "I say" and "we say", ''vayaṃ brūmaḥ'' can be used in the singular and dual sense as well.


Greek

The dual can be found in Ancient Greek Homeric texts such as the ''
Iliad The ''Iliad'' (; grc, Ἰλιάς, Iliás, ; "a poem about Ilium") is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the ''Ody ...
'' and the ''
Odyssey The ''Odyssey'' (; grc, Ὀδύσσεια, Odýsseia, ) is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the '' Iliad'', ...
'', although its use is only sporadic, owing as much to artistic prerogatives as dictional and metrical requirements within the hexametric meter. There were only two distinct forms of the dual in Ancient Greek. In classical Greek, the dual was all but lost, except in the Attic dialect of
Athens Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates a ...
, where it persisted until the fifth century BC. Even in this case, its use depended on the author and certain stock expressions. In
Koine Greek Koine Greek (; Koine el, ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος, hē koinè diálektos, the common dialect; ), also known as Hellenistic Greek, common Attic, the Alexandrian dialect, Biblical Greek or New Testament Greek, was the common supra-reg ...
and
Modern Greek Modern Greek (, , or , ''Kiní Neoellinikí Glóssa''), generally referred to by speakers simply as Greek (, ), refers collectively to the dialects of the Greek language spoken in the modern era, including the official standardized form of the ...
, the only remnant of the dual is the numeral for "two", , , which has lost its genitive and dative cases (both , ) and retains its nominative/accusative form. Thus it appears to be undeclined in all cases. Nevertheless,
Aristophanes of Byzantium __NOTOC__ Aristophanes of Byzantium ( grc-gre, Ἀριστοφάνης ὁ Βυζάντιος ; BC) was a Hellenistic Greek scholar, critic and grammarian, particularly renowned for his work in Homeric scholarship, but also for work on other ...
, the foremost authority of his time (early 2nd century BC) on grammar and style, and a staunch defender of "proper" High Attic tradition, admonishes those who write ''dysí'' (dative, plural number) rather than the "correct" ''dyoīn'' (dative, dual number).


Latin

The dual was lost in Latin and its sister Italic languages. However, certain fossilized forms remained, for example, (twenty), but (thirty), the words (both, compare Slavic ), / with a dual declension.


Celtic languages

Reconstructed
Proto-Celtic Proto-Celtic, or Common Celtic, is the ancestral proto-language of all known Celtic languages, and a descendant of Proto-Indo-European. It is not attested in writing but has been partly reconstructed through the comparative method. Proto-Celt ...
nominal and adjectival declensions contain distinct dual forms; pronouns and verbs do not. In
Old Irish Old Irish, also called Old Gaelic ( sga, Goídelc, Ogham script: ᚌᚑᚔᚇᚓᚂᚉ; ga, Sean-Ghaeilge; gd, Seann-Ghàidhlig; gv, Shenn Yernish or ), is the oldest form of the Goidelic/Gaelic language for which there are extensive writte ...
, nouns and the definite article still have dual forms, but only when accompanied by the numeral ' "two". Traces of the dual remain in Middle Welsh, in nouns denoting pairs of body parts that incorporate the numeral two: e.g. (from "knee"), (from "ear"). In the modern languages, there are still significant remnants of dual number in Irish and
Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic ( gd, Gàidhlig ), also known as Scots Gaelic and Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well as ...
in nominal phrases containing the numeral or (including the higher numerals 12, 22, etc.). As the following table shows, and combines with a singular noun, which is lenited. Masculine nouns take no special inflection, but feminine nouns have a slenderized dual form, which is in fact identical to the dative singular. Languages of the
Brythonic Brittonic or Brythonic may refer to: *Common Brittonic, or Brythonic, the Celtic language anciently spoken in Great Britain *Brittonic languages, a branch of the Celtic languages descended from Common Brittonic *Britons (Celtic people) The Br ...
branch do not have dual number. As mentioned above for Middle Welsh, some nouns can be said to have dual forms, prefixed with a form of the numeral "two" (Breton , Welsh , Cornish ). This process is not fully productive, however, and the prefixed forms are semantically restricted. For example, Breton (< "hand") can only refer to one person's pair of hands, not any two hands from two different people. Welsh must refer to a period of two consecutive months, whereas can be any two months (compare “fortnight” in English as opposed to “two weeks” or “14 days”; the first must, but the second and third need not, be a single consecutive period). The modern Welsh term (= hands) is formed by adding the feminine (and conjoining) form of 'two' () with the word for 'hand' — becoming as it is no longer in a stressed syllable.


Germanic languages

The dual was present in all the early Germanic languages, as well as in
Proto-Germanic Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic br ...
. However, the dual had been entirely lost in nouns by that time, and since verbs agreed with nouns in number, so had the third-person dual form of verbs as a result. The dual therefore remained only in the first- and second-person pronouns and their accompanying verb forms.
Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
retained this situation more or less unchanged. It had markings for the first and second person for both the verbs and pronouns, for example "we two" as compared to "we, more than two".
Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th ...
,
Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlement ...
and the other old Germanic languages had dual marking only in the personal pronouns, but not in the verbs. The dual has disappeared as a productive form in all the living languages, with loss of the dual occurring in North Frisian dialects only quite recently. In
Austro-Bavarian Bavarian (german: Bairisch , Bavarian: ''Boarisch'') or alternately Austro-Bavarian, is a West Germanic language, part of the Upper German family, together with Alemannic and East Franconian. Bavarian is spoken by approximately 12 million peo ...
, the old dual pronouns have replaced the standard plural pronouns: nominative , accusative (from Proto-Germanic  and , ). A similar development in the pronoun system can be seen in Icelandic and Faroese. Another remnant of the dual can be found in the use of the pronoun ("both") in the Scandinavian languages of Norwegian and Danish, in Swedish and in Faroese and Icelandic. In these languages, in order to state "all + number", the constructions are / ("all two") but / ("all three"). In German, the expression ("both") is equivalent to, though more commonly used than, ("all two"). Norwegian Nynorsk also retains the conjunction ("one of two") and its inverse ("neither of two"). A remnant of a lost dual also survives in the Icelandic and Faroese ordinals first and second, which can be translated two ways: First there is and , which mean the first and second of two respectively, while and mean first and second of more than two. In Icelandic the pronouns ("one") and ("other") are also used to denote each unit of a set of two in contrast to the pronouns ("one") and ("second"). Therefore in Icelandic "with one hand" translates as not , and as in English "with the other hand" is . An additional element in Icelandic worth mentioning are the interrogative pronouns ("who / which / what" of two) and ("who / which / what" of more than two).


Baltic languages

Among the Baltic languages, the dual form existed but is now nearly obsolete in standard Lithuanian. The dual form was still used on two- litas coins issued in 1925, but the plural form () is used on later two-litas coins.


Slavic languages

Common Slavic had a complete singular-dual-plural number system, although the nominal dual paradigms showed considerable
syncretism Syncretism () is the practice of combining different beliefs and various schools of thought. Syncretism involves the merging or assimilation of several originally discrete traditions, especially in the theology and mythology of religion, thu ...
, just as they did in
Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo ...
. Dual was fully operable at the time of Old Church Slavonic manuscript writings, and it has been subsequently lost in most Slavic dialects in the historical period. Of the living languages, only Slovene, the Chakavian form and certain Kajkavian forms of Croatian, and Sorbian have preserved the dual number as a productive form. In all of the remaining languages, its influence is still found in the declension of nouns of which there are commonly only two: eyes, ears, shoulders, in certain fixed expressions, and the agreement of nouns when used with numbers. In all the languages, the words "two" and "both" preserve characteristics of the dual declension. The following table shows a selection of forms for the numeral "two": Notes: # In some Slavic languages, there is a further distinction between animate and inanimate masculine nouns. In Polish, for animate masculine nouns, the possible nominative forms are , or . # Variant form for the masculine/neuter locative and instrumental in Serbo-Croatian: / . In Common Slavic, the rules were relatively simple for determining the appropriate case and number form of the noun, when it was used with a numeral. The following rules apply: # With the numeral "one", both the noun, adjective, and numeral were in the same singular case, with the numeral being declined as an pronoun. # With the numeral "two", both the noun, adjective, and numeral were in the same dual case. There were separate forms for the masculine and neuter-feminine nouns. # With the numerals "three" and "four", the noun, adjective, and numeral were in the same plural case. # With any numeral above "four", the numeral was followed by the noun and adjective in the genitive plural case. The numeral itself was actually a numeral noun that was declined according to its syntactic function. With the loss of the dual in most of the Slavic languages, the above pattern now is only seen in the forms of the numbers for the tens, hundreds, and rarely thousands. This can be seen by examining the following table: The Common Slavic rules governing the declension of nouns after numerals, which were described above, have been preserved in Slovene. In those Slavic languages that have lost the dual, the system has been simplified and changed in various ways, but many languages have kept traces of the dual in it. In general, Czech, Slovak, Polish and Ukrainian have extended the pattern of "three/four" to "two"; Russian, Belarusian and Serbo-Croatian have, on the contrary, extended the pattern of "two" to "three/four"; and Bulgarian and Macedonian have extended the pattern of "two" to all numerals. The resulting systems are as follows: # In Czech, Slovak, Polish and Ukrainian, numerals from "two" to "four" are always followed by a noun in the same plural case, but higher numerals (if in the nominative) are followed by a noun in the genitive plural. # In Belarusian and Serbo-Croatian, numerals from "two" to "four" (if in the nominative) are followed by a noun in a form originating from the Common Slavic nominative dual, which has now completely or almost completely merged with the nominative plural (in the case of Belarusian) or genitive singular (in the case of Serbo-Croatian). Higher numerals are followed by a noun in the genitive plural. # In Russian, the form of noun following the numeral is nominative singular if the numeral ends in "one", genitive singular if the numeral ends in "two" to "four", and genitive plural otherwise. As an exception, the form of noun is also genitive plural if the numeral ends in 11 to 14. Also, some words (for example, many measure words, such as units) have a special " count form" (счётная форма) for use in numerical phrases instead of genitive (for some words mandatory, for others optional), for example, восемь мегабайт, пять килограмм and пять килограммов, три ряда́ and три ря́да, and полтора часа́. # In Bulgarian and Macedonian, all numerals are followed by a noun in a form originating from the Common Slavic nominative dual, which has now been re-interpreted as a "count form" or "quantitative plural". These different systems are exemplified in the table below where the word "wolf" is used to form nominative noun phrases with various numerals. The dual and forms originating from it are underlined. The dual has also left traces in the declension of nouns describing body parts that humans customarily had two of, for example: eyes, ears, legs, breasts, and hands. Often the plural declension is used to give a figurative meaning. The table below summarizes the key such points.


Slovene

Along with the
Sorbian languages The Sorbian languages ( hsb, serbska rěč, dsb, serbska rěc) are the Upper Sorbian language and Lower Sorbian language, two closely related and partially mutually intelligible languages spoken by the Sorbs, a West Slavic ethno-cultural min ...
, Chakavian Croatian, and the extinct Old Church Slavonic, Slovene uses the dual. Although popular sources claim that Slovene has "preserved full grammatical use of the dual," Standard Slovene (and, to varying degrees, Slovene dialects) show significant reduction of the dual number system when compared with Common Slavic. In general, dual forms have a tendency to be replaced by plural forms. This tendency is stronger in oblique cases than in the nominative/accusative: in standard Slovene, genitive and locative forms have merged with the plural, and in many dialects, pluralization has extended to dative/instrumental forms. Dual inflection is better preserved in masculine forms than in feminine forms. Natural pairs are usually expressed with the plural in Slovene, not with the dual: e.g. "hands", ears. The dual forms of such nouns can be used, in conjunction with the quantifiers "two" or "both", to emphasize the number: e.g. "I only have two hands". The words for "parents" and "twins" show variation in colloquial Slovene between plural (, ) and dual (, ). Standard Slovene has replaced the nominative dual pronouns of Common Slavic ( "the two of us", "the two of you", "the two of them" ./f./n. with new synthetic dual forms: (literally, "we-two"), , . Nominative case of noun "wolf", with and without numerals: The dual is recognised by many Slovene speakers as one of the most distinctive features of the language and a mark of recognition, and is often mentioned in tourist brochures. For verbs, the endings in the present tense are given as , , . The table below shows a comparison of the conjugation of the verb , which means "to do, to make, to work" and belongs to Class IV in the singular, dual, and plural. In the imperative, the endings are given as for the first-person dual and for the second-person dual. The table below shows the imperative forms for the verb ("to walk") in the first and second persons of the imperative (the imperative does not exist for first-person singular).


Sorbian language

As in Slovenian, the Sorbian language (both dialects Upper and Lower Sorbian) has preserved the dual. For nouns, the following endings are used: # The genitive form is based on the plural form of the noun. # The -e ending causes various softening changes to occur to the preceding constant, for further information see the article on Sorbian. For example, the declension of ''sin'' (masculine) and ''crow'' (feminine) in the dual in Upper Sorbian would be given as For verbs, the endings in the present tense are given as , , . The table below shows a comparison of the conjugation of the verb , which means "to write" and belongs to Class I in the singular, dual, and plural.


Languages with dual number

*
Afroasiatic languages The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic), also known as Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic, and sometimes also as Afrasian, Erythraean or Lisramic, are a language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in the geographic ...
** Egyptian (including Coptic) **
Semitic languages The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigrant ...
***
Akkadian Akkadian or Accadian may refer to: * Akkadians, inhabitants of the Akkadian Empire * Akkadian language, an extinct Eastern Semitic language * Akkadian literature, literature in this language * Akkadian cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo-syllabic ...
(Assyrian and Babylonian) ***
Biblical Hebrew Biblical Hebrew (, or , ), also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language, a language in the Canaanite branch of Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Israel, roughly west of t ...
***
Classical Arabic Classical Arabic ( ar, links=no, ٱلْعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ, al-ʿarabīyah al-fuṣḥā) or Quranic Arabic is the standardized literary form of Arabic used from the 7th century and throughout the Middle Ages, most notab ...
**** Gulf Arabic (in nouns) **** Levantine Arabic **** Maltese ***
Sabaean Sabean or Sabaean may refer to: *Sabaeans, ancient people in South Arabia **Sabaean language, Old South Arabian language *Sabians, name of a religious group mentioned in the Quran, historically adopted by: **Mandaeans, Gnostic sect from the marshl ...
*** Ugaritic * Austronesian languages **
Tagalog language Tagalog (, ; ; '' Baybayin'': ) is an Austronesian language spoken as a first language by the ethnic Tagalog people, who make up a quarter of the population of the Philippines, and as a second language by the majority. Its standardized form, ...
**
Cebuano language Cebuano (Cebuano
on Merriam-Webster.com
), natively called by its generic term Bisaya or Binisaya (bot ...
**
Ilocano language Ilocano (also Ilokano; ; Ilocano: ) is an Austronesian language spoken in the Philippines, primarily by Ilocano people and as a lingua franca by the Igorot people and also by the native settlers of Cagayan Valley. It is the third most-spo ...
** Polynesian languages ***
Māori Māori or Maori can refer to: Relating to the Māori people * Māori people of New Zealand, or members of that group * Māori language, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand * Māori culture * Cook Islanders, the Māori people of the Co ...
(only the personal pronouns) *** Samoan (only the personal pronouns) *** Tongan (only the personal pronouns) *** Tahitian (only the personal pronouns) *** Hawaiian (only the personal pronouns) **
Chamorro Chamorro may refer to: * Chamorro people, the indigenous people of the Mariana Islands in the Western Pacific * Chamorro language, an Austronesian language indigenous to The Marianas * Chamorro Time Zone, the time zone of Guam and the Northern Mari ...
(reflected in the verb) *
Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, D ...
** Avestan **
Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic pe ...
**
Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, ...
(only first and second person pronouns and verb forms) *** North Frisian (only pronouns in some dialects) ***
Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
***
Punjabi Punjabi, or Panjabi, most often refers to: * Something of, from, or related to Punjab, a region in India and Pakistan * Punjabi language * Punjabi people * Punjabi dialects and languages Punjabi may also refer to: * Punjabi (horse), a British Th ...
(largely, but not limited to, nouns for paired body parts; concurrent with the instrumental case) ***
Old Frisian Old Frisian was a West Germanic language spoken between the 8th and 16th centuries along the North Sea coast, roughly between the mouths of the Rhine and Weser rivers. The Frisian settlers on the coast of South Jutland (today's Northern Fries ...
(only the personal pronouns) ***
Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th ...
(only the
personal pronouns Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person (as ''I''), second person (as ''you''), or third person (as ''he'', ''she'', ''it'', ''they''). Personal pronouns may also take dif ...
) ***
Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlement ...
(only the personal pronouns) **** Icelandic (only the personal pronouns) ***
Old Saxon Old Saxon, also known as Old Low German, was a Germanic language and the earliest recorded form of Low German (spoken nowadays in Northern Germany, the northeastern Netherlands, southern Denmark, the Americas and parts of Eastern Europe). I ...
(only the personal pronouns) **
Insular Celtic languages Insular Celtic languages are the group of Celtic languages of Brittany, Great Britain, Ireland, and the Isle of Man. All surviving Celtic languages are in the Insular group, including Breton, which is spoken on continental Europe in Brittany ...
: ***
Old Irish Old Irish, also called Old Gaelic ( sga, Goídelc, Ogham script: ᚌᚑᚔᚇᚓᚂᚉ; ga, Sean-Ghaeilge; gd, Seann-Ghàidhlig; gv, Shenn Yernish or ), is the oldest form of the Goidelic/Gaelic language for which there are extensive writte ...
*** Irish (only nouns, only following the numeral for ''two'') ***
Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic ( gd, Gàidhlig ), also known as Scots Gaelic and Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well as ...
(only nouns, only following the numeral for ''two'') ** Old Church Slavonic ** Old East Slavic **
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural diffusion ...
** Slovene ** Chakavian **
Sorbian languages The Sorbian languages ( hsb, serbska rěč, dsb, serbska rěc) are the Upper Sorbian language and Lower Sorbian language, two closely related and partially mutually intelligible languages spoken by the Sorbs, a West Slavic ethno-cultural min ...
: *** Lower Sorbian *** Upper Sorbian *
Pama–Nyungan languages The Pama–Nyungan languages are the most widespread family of Australian Aboriginal languages, containing 306 out of 400 Aboriginal languages in Australia. The name "Pama–Nyungan" is a merism: it derived from the two end-points of the range ...
** Woiwurrung–Taungurung language ** Yidiny ** Barngarla *
Uralic languages The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian ...
** Khanty ** Mansi ** Nenets ** Sami languages * Other natural languages ** American Sign Language ** Dogrib (only in the first person) ** Hopi (nouns) ** Hmong ** Inuktitut ** Khamti **
Khoe languages The Khoi languages are the largest of the non-Bantu language families indigenous to Southern Africa. They were once considered to be a branch of a Khoisan language family, and were known as Central Khoisan in that scenario. Though Khoisan is ...
**
Komo language Komo is a Nilo-Saharan language spoken by the Kwama (Komo) people of Ethiopia, Sudan and South Sudan. It is a member of the Koman languages. The language is also referred to as Madiin, Koma, South Koma, Central Koma, Gokwom and Hayahaya. Many i ...
** Kunama languageIdris, Nikodimos.1987. ''The Kunama and their language.'' Addis Ababa University BA thesis. ** Lakota (only the personal pronouns, always means "you and I") ** Mapuzungun ** Melanesian Pidgin (several related languages) **
Mi'kmaq The Mi'kmaq (also ''Mi'gmaq'', ''Lnu'', ''Miꞌkmaw'' or ''Miꞌgmaw''; ; ) are a First Nations people of the Northeastern Woodlands, indigenous to the areas of Canada's Atlantic Provinces and the Gaspé Peninsula of Quebec as well as the no ...
**
Nhanda The Nhanda people, also spelt Nanda, Nhunda, Nhanta, and other variants, are an Aboriginal Australian people who live in the mid-west region of Western Australia around the mouth of the Murchison River. Language The traditional language of ...
** Santali (nouns) ** Tonkawa ** Xavante language **
Yaghan Yaghan, Yagán or Yahgan may refer to: * Yahgan people, an ethnic group of Argentina and Chile * Yahgan language, their language * Yaghan (dog), an extinct domesticated fox See also

* Yagan (disambiguation) * Yagha, a province of Burkina Faso ...
*Constructed languages ** Quenya (elvish language created by J.R.R Tolkien) **
Adûnaic Adûnaic (or Adunaic) ("language of the West") is one of the fictional languages devised by J. R. R. Tolkien for his fantasy works. One of the languages of Arda in Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium, Adûnaic was spoken by the Men of Númenor ...
(human language created by J.R.R Tolkien)


See also

*
Grammatical number In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one", "two" or "three or more"). English and other languages present number categories of ...


Notes


References

* * Fritz, Matthias. ''Der Dual im Indogermanischen''. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2011. * Fontinoy, Charles. ''Le duel dans les langues sémitiques''. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1969. *
Wilhelm von Humboldt Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt (, also , ; ; 22 June 1767 – 8 April 1835) was a Prussian philosopher, linguist, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the Humboldt University of Berlin, which was named afte ...
(1828).
Über den Dualis
'. Berlin * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Dual (Grammatical Number) Grammatical number 2 (number)