numerals

"glen gordon" <glengordon0-@...> wrote:
original article:http://www.egroups.com/group/cybalist/?start=1652

>
> Glen (Me):
> >>How should we explain the Semitic loanwords in Kartvelian?
>
> John:
> >Was Kartvellian always confined to Georgia?
>
> The term is Kartvelian with ONE -l-. They were probably there for a

good

> 14,000 years as you've proposed. Most seem to think that this is the

case as

> well. Linguistically, Kartvelian is off on its own within the

Nostratic

> grouping. Everything makes sense. As for whether they were confined
> _specifically_ to Georgia, I don't know. One would expect Kartvelian

or

> pre-Kartvelian to attempt a spread but perhaps this spread was erased

by the

> rich chauldron of languages existent in the area. It probably wasn't

so

> linguistically populated north of the Black Sea.
>
> The Kartvelian loans I'm talking about involve Kartvelian itself.

They are

> ancient words having been reconstructed as securely as IE *septm but

yet

> show the same blunt influence of Semitic. I recall *arwa "eight"

(compare

> Semitic "four") as well as the ubiquitous numerals for "six" and

"seven"

> which come out looking something like **weks^w- (<- DANGER, from

memory

> only) and **s^wid-, I think? Now the numeral for "seven" appears to

be based

> on the Semitic masculine form, just like IE *septm. The word for

"six" looks

> alot like IE *sweks.
>
> If you're considering them to be just IE loans, think again. You'd

have a

> hard time explaining our little friend from above, *arwa "eight". The

word

> for "four" by the way is *otsxo and appears to be a possible loan via

IE

> (cf. *oktou "eight" and *okto- "a grouping of four" < ? IndoEtruscan

*kwetwe

> "four": Etruscan huth). These Semitic-looking words can't be

Berberish loans

> either, so something's up.

If Kartvelian and IE have indeed loaned numerals from semitic in a way
or another, it must be for a precise reason; Ante Aikio that I already
cited said that some Uralic languages loaned numerals from IE (apart
frrm sata, hundred, that is ubiquitious), but not all numerals,
specifically seven. He attributes this to the number of day in a week
(and other things that I forgot and could'nt cite from memory). I think
it is not a coincidence that specifically "seven" was loaned.

In languages of China, higher numerals tend to be loaned from chinese,
whereas lower numeral remain native. It is so in tai-yay languages,
that retain only nwn "one", all other numerals being late chinese
loans. In some tibeto-burman languages, the original TB numerals have
remained, and they are clearly unrelated to chinese "two" Kachin :
lakhông Bai : ko~; "one" : I remeber only tangut : a, but I know many
iother TB languages also have a for "one", Mirish languages or
Bodo-garo, but I don't know much on those.
In TB languages of Nepal, the situation is the same : the numerals
above five are not remembered by younger people (in limbu, for example).

Therefore, the Semito-IE-Kartvelian situation is quite abnormal as
regard to how numbers are loaned; it means that it is not really
through commerce that the numeral "seven" was loaned, I think.

Guillaume