Re: Why are "the teens" special ?

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham" <richard@...>
wrote:

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "elevans1" wrote:
>
> > And thank you, Lars, I had often wondered why in Russian the

numbers 2

> > through 4 were treated differently from other numbers I

considered to

> > be similarly plural from an English perspective. I never

thought of

> > the thumb vs. 4 long fingers explanation!
>
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "squilluncus" <grvs@> wrote:
> > > Also Russian gen plur from five but two to four with
> > > gen sing.
> > > There seems to have been two systems originally:
> > > one only counting the long fingers, one also including
> > > the thumb.
>
> It's not an explanation for the Russian behaviour. While it may be
> natural to group things in fours, the Russian behaviour is simply a
> generalisation of the dual misinterpreted as a genitive singular.
> Also, while French and Italian have 'six-ten' and then 'ten-seven',
> Spanish has 'five-ten' and then 'ten-six'.

But why this generalization within just the first tetrad?
Spanish might be a victim of analogy from a protoromance system.

> Contrary to Lars's interesting article, numerals embedding nouns

are

> not so odd.

I would never claim to have written an article. I just gave some
examples of what has been observed passim. In addition there is
declination of the first four numerals in many languages, but five
and upwards are indeclinabilia.

> What, I wonder, does Lars make of 'phan ha:' in Thai? Literally is
> 'thousand five', but it usually means 1500 rather then 1005. The

Sorry I wouldn't dare to have an opinion of this.

'six oh' and German use of 'zwo' seem to be due to demands of
efficient telephonic communication.

Lars