[Footnote 68:  Assuming the existence of a word “firelet.”]

[Footnote 69:  The Nootka diminutive is doubtless more of a feeling-element, an element of nuance, than our _-ling_.  This is shown by the fact that it may be used with verbs as well as with nouns.  In speaking to a child, one is likely to add the diminutive to any word in the sentence, regardless of whether there is an inherent diminutive meaning in the word or not.]

Can such a concept as that of plurality ever be classified with the more material concepts of group II?  Indeed it can be.  In Yana the third person of the verb makes no formal distinction between singular and plural.  Nevertheless the plural concept can be, and nearly always is, expressed by the suffixing of an element (_-ba-_) to the radical element of the verb.  “It burns in the east” is rendered by the verb ya-hau-si “burn-east-s."[70] “They burn in the east” is ya-ba-hau-si.  Note that the plural affix immediately follows the radical element (ya-), disconnecting it from the local element (_-hau-_).  It needs no labored argument to prove that the concept of plurality is here hardly less concrete than that of location “in the east,” and that the Yana form corresponds in feeling not so much to our “They burn in the east” (ardunt oriente) as to a “Burn-several-east-s, it plurally burns in the east,” an expression which we cannot adequately assimilate for lack of the necessary form-grooves into which to run it.

[Footnote 70:  _-si_ is the third person of the present tense. _-hau-_ “east” is an affix, not a compounded radical element.]

But can we go a step farther and dispose of the category of plurality as an utterly material idea, one that would make of “books” a “plural book,” in which the “plural,” like the “white” of “white book,” falls contentedly into group I?  Our “many books” and “several books” are obviously not cases in point.  Even if we could say “many book” and “several book” (as we can say “many a book” and “each book"), the plural concept would still not emerge as clearly as it should for our argument; “many” and “several” are contaminated by certain notions of quantity or scale that are not essential to the idea of plurality itself.  We must turn to central and eastern Asia for the type of expression we are seeking.  In Tibetan, for instance, nga-s mi mthong[71] “I-by man see, by me a man is seen, I see a man” may just as well be understood to mean “I see men,” if there happens to be no reason to emphasize the fact of plurality.[72] If the fact is worth expressing, however, I can say nga-s mi rnams mthong “by me man plural see,” where rnams is the perfect conceptual analogue of _-s_ in books, divested of all relational strings. Rnams follows its noun as would any other attributive word—­“man plural” (whether two or a million) like “man white.”  No need to bother about his plurality any more than about his whiteness unless we insist on the point.