Datapoint Diu Indo-Portuguese (older lect)/Occurrence of nominal plural markers

Nominal reduplication used to be the normal (though variable) strategy to mark plurality, as attested in late 19th-century accounts of Diu Indo-Portuguese (Schuchardt 1883). The examples recently encountered were recorded in the speech of an old lady and a poorly educated middle-aged man, and they were rare even in the speech of these consultants. All examples encountered involved animate (human and non-human) referents, but the truth of the matter is that the corpus of occurrences (both 19th-century and modern data) is too reduced to discard the possibility that pluralizing reduplication has ever applied to inanimate referents.

Values

Variable plural marking of human nouns

Example 39-5:
Dəpəy muyɛmuyɛr də Manu, muyɛmuyɛr də ɔrlãd.
Dəpəy
then
muyɛr~muyɛr
woman~woman
də
of
Manu,
Manu
muyɛr~muyɛr
woman~woman
də
of
ɔrlãd.
Orlando
then the women of Manu('s family), the women of Orlando('s family)

Source: Cardoso 2009: 175

Example 39-15:
Es tud rəkri tud ε də moyrmoyr.
Es
dem
tud
all
rəkri
food.stall
tud
all
ε
cop.npst
də
of
moyr~moyr.
Muslim~Muslim
All these food stalls belong to Muslims.

Source: Cardoso 2009: 120

Confidence:
Certain