[tied] Re: Numbers.

--- In cybalist@..., "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...> wrote:

>
> Anders:
> >I think that nothing of our language is innate. I. e everything has
> >to be learnt.
>
> Yep. Me agree. Language is a highly abstract form of communication
> and couldn't possibly spontaneously generate into existence without
> some other less abstract stage to have nurtured it. In other words,
> spoken language was probably well developed by the time it first
> existed. This is why I keep mentioning sign language as a logical
> "proto-language" intermediary. But I digress because no one listens
> to poor ol' moi ;)
>
> Anyways, as for numerals, I don't think that we are fully aware
> of how old numeral systems are. I'm convinced that numeral systems
> were in existence in at least some languages for at least the past
> 20,000 years... However, this timeframe is often much too large
> for many people to dare contemplate so it's hard to muster approval
> on this thought.

Very interesting this. Even then, 20,000 years ago, I guess fingers
were at hand to show how many this and that to change for how many
these and those.

Today we have at least three spesific words in norwegian
for "describing" numbers also beeing numbers if I may express myself
so:

dusin = 12 =dozen

snes = 20

tylft = 144 = 12 x 12 = tolv x tolv

Snes is even today used for eggs in particular.

Tylft I believe still is in use when talking about timber. (I'm not
quite sure if actually today, but in the 70-80'ies, yes.)

>
> At any rate, while I'm sure that the need for numeral systems was
> less of a necessity the further back in the past we go, I think
> that the concepts "one", "some" and "many" are much more basic to
> human languages. Even languages without established numerals
> systems *still* have words like these so why should we expect any
> different from prehistoric languages? We need to throw away this
> antiquated bias that makes us think that we somehow grunted our
> way through language like in that movie... What was it called?
> "Quest for Fire"?

This movie had a language constructed by the late author Anthony
Burgess, who also devolped the language for "A Clockwork Orange" as
you may be aware of. "Quest for Fire" was supposed to describe the
very beginning of "human behavior" some 100,000 years ago, if I'm not
wrong.
Numbers were useful even then, if you ask me. Fingers too...:-)

Morten

>
> As for whether numbers are ultimately "nouns" or "adjectives"...
> this is just babbletalk. A number is a number. In reality,
> a number always qualifies some other noun unless you're talking
> algebra.
>
> - love gLeN
>
>
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