Dual (grammatical Number) - The Dual in Indo-European Languages

The Dual in Indo-European Languages

The category of dual can doubtless be reconstructed for the Proto-Indo-European, the ancestor of all Indo-European languages, 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 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 and Old Irish (see below), and in some fossilized terms in Latin.

Due to the scarcity of evidence, the reconstruction of dual endings for Proto-Indo-European is difficult, but at least formally according the comparative method it can be ascertained that no more than three dual endings are reconstructible for nominal inflection. Mallory & Adams (2006) reconstruct the dual endings as:

• Nominative/Accusative/Vocative: *-h₁(e)
• Genitive/Ablative: *-h₁(e) / *-oHs
• Dative: *-me / *-OH
• Locative: *-h₁ow
• Instrumental: *-bʰih₁

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 deity Mitrá, when appearing in dual form Mitrā́ it refers to both Mitra and his companion Varuṇa. Homeric dual Αἴαντε refers to Ajax the Greater and his fighting companion Teucer, and Latin plural Castorēs 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, but fully functioning as a paradigmatic category only in Sorbian, Chakavian and Slovene. 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).