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Dual (abbreviated ) is a grammatical number that some languages use in addition to singular and plural. When a noun or pronoun appears in dual form, it is interpreted as referring to precisely two of the entities (objects or persons) identified by the noun or pronoun. Verbs can also have dual agreement forms in these languages. The dual number existed in Proto-Indo-European, persisted in many of the now extinct ancient Indo-European languages that descended from it— Ancient Greek and Gothic for example—and can still be found in a few modern Indo-European languages such as Scottish Gaelic, Slovenian, and Sorbian. Among surviving ancient languages, Sanskrit uses dual forms across nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Many more modern Indo-European languages show residual traces of the dual, as in the English distinctions ''both'' vs. ''all'', ''either'' vs. ''any'', ''neither'' vs. ''none'', and so on. Many Semitic languages also have dual number. For instance, in Arabic, ', is added to the end of any noun to indicate that it is dual (regardless of how the plural is being formed). Dual number is also present in those Khoisan languages that have a rich inflectional morphology, particularly Khoe languages. == Comparative characteristics == Many languages make a distinction between singular and plural: English, for example, distinguishes between ''man'' and ''men'', or ''house'' and ''houses''. In some languages, in addition to such singular and plural forms, there is also a dual form, which is used when exactly two people or things are meant. In many languages with dual forms, use of the dual is mandatory as in some Arabic dialects using dual in nouns as in Hejazi Arabic, and the plural is used only for groups greater than two. However, use of the dual is optional in some languages such as other modern Arabic dialects including Egyptian Arabic. In other languages such as Hebrew, the dual exists only for words naming time spans (day, week, etc.), a few measure words, and for words that naturally come in pairs and are not used in the plural except in rhetoric: eyes, ears, and so forth. In Slovene, the use of the dual is mandatory, except for nouns that are natural pairs, such as trousers, eyes, for which the plural form can be used. Although relatively few languages have the dual number and most have no number or only singular and plural, using different words for groups of two and groups greater than two is not uncommon. English has words distinguishing dual vs. plural number, including: ''both/all'', ''either/any'', ''neither/none'', ''between/among'', ''former/first'', and ''latter/last''. Japanese, which has no grammatical number, also has words ''dochira'' (which of the two) and ''dore'' (which of the three or more), etc. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Dual (grammatical number)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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