Number in Sorbian with special reference to the dual

Abstract

Abstract The first part of the paper discusses the interaction of number with gender, animacy, virility and case in Upper and Lower Sorbian as compared with the other Slavic languages. Different rankings of these features are found across Slavic and relative pertinence of the dual number is examined in relation to the rankings of nominal categories. The result of this comparison shows that dual preservation vs. loss cannot be accounted for in terms of these rankings in a straightforward way. The second part of the paper examines semantic and pragmatic properties of dual constructions in Upper Sorbian, which is in the process of losing the dual, in order to establish the conditioning factors of dual preservation vs. loss. It is shown that – apart from bound uses triggered by ‘two’ or ‘both’ – relative resistance to dual loss in Sorbian can be observed in distributive uses which distinguish two-member sets from any other kind of set.