The affix -kond and plurality representation in the modern Estonian language

The quantitative behaviour and semantic features of collective names in the Estonian language are studied using the material of the affix -kond, the most productive formant with the meaning of collectiveness. Corpus studies significantly complement and modify the existing results obtained from lexicographic sources and grammatical descriptions. The purpose of the study was to identify the specifics of the representation of plurality in names that express collectiveness and have a complete quantitative paradigm. Collective names with the formant -kond denote sets of homogeneous discrete elements combined according to different criteria. The relationship between the representation of plurality and the quantitative behavior of collective names in Estonian has not been studied previously. The findings indicate that the type of the representation of the quantity of elements (as indeterminately large or small) is essential for distinguishing sets (in the narrow sense) and aggregates. The analysis of contexts where names with the formant -kond are used confirms the preference for choosing plural forms in distributive and distributed contexts. Emotional or neutral contexts can also determine the choice of the quantitative form. Names representing a set “loaded” with characteristics of different types are prone to plural forms. Investigation of the relationship between the method of representing sets and the grammatical features of names allows us to find new patterns that are of interest to various theoretical and practical areas of linguistics, such as the study of polysemy, the assessment of the text tonality, and the search for intra- and interlingual correspondences.