"Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...> wrote:
> Enough, people! I was speaking about numbers in languages *in
> general*. When refering to a specific language, of course we might
> call its numerals "nouns" or "adjectives" or whatever makes sense
> for that language.
In the sense of a number or numbers being purely "abstract" nouns, I
don't think you'll find much evidence of that before Pythagoras,
Plato, Euclid et al -- at least in the "West."
By that I mean, if you look for a number as an idea separate from
what
is being counted or numbered. E.g., My favorite number is Four.
Seven
is sacred. There's nothing like it in Homer or Hittite. I'm told
that a rare example is found in Babylonian arithmatic lesson texts.
But otherwise numbers were adjectival - without any evidence of the
idea as anything but that of a descriptor.
Regards,
Steve Long