Odp: Vigesimal system

----- Original Message -----

From: Michel Desfayes

To: cybalist@eGroups.com

Sent: Sunday, December 26, 1999 3:12 PM

Subject: [cybalist] Vigesimal system

Hi, Little has been published on the vigesimal system of counting which is used in French, Basque, Danish, Icelandic, Caucasian, Sumerian, and residually in Spain, Portugal, Albania, English (score, fourscore...) and some Slavic dialects (i.e. the Resian dialect of Slovenian). Could anybody direct me to some such publications ? Thanks Michel Hi, Michael,   The use of vigesimal systems throughout the Indo-European family is discussed with attention to detail in: Jadranka Gvozdanović (ed.). 1992. Indo-European Numerals (= Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs 57). Berlin/NY/Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter. Note, in particular, David Greene's ("Celtic") and Glanville Price's ("Romance") contributions to that volume. If you want a typological approach, you should consult James R. Hurford's Language and Number (1987. Oxford: Blackwell) and Joseph H. Greenberg's (1978) "Generalizations about Numeral Systems" in Universals of Human Language (Vol. 3).   20 is a relatively common base among the more sophisticated number systems worldwide. Many languages combine vigesimal with quinary or decimal methods of counting. Little wonder, considering the (5+5)+(5+5) arrangement of our natural digits (fingers and toes). For example, in the traditional Chukchi system "8" is encoded as 3+5, "18" as 3+15, "60" as 3x20, "300" as 15x20, and the largest number (prior to the borrowing of Russian numerals) used to be "400" = 20x20. Other well-known vigesimal systems include that of the Maya (in whose astronomical calculations 360 also played an important role as an auxiliary base), and that of some Ainu dialects (especially in Hokkaido), where, e.g., "70" = 10+(3x20), "100" = 5x20, and "1000" = 5x(10x20). This system is more consistent than that of Basque, where hirurogeitahamar "70" = 'threescore and ten', but ehun "100" and mila "1000" are simplex terms (influence of decimal counting).   With the season's greetings,   Piotr