[tied] Re: Numerals query again

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

> >
> > I think it's significant that *(d)wi-(d)k^m.t-ih1, the PIE word

for

> > '20', involved a dual and that in many branches it came to differ
> > structurally from the other decadic terms. As a result, it became
> > unanalysable, like the basic number terms (the cardinals

from 'one'

> to
> > 'ten'); the same happened to the word for 'one hundred', *(d)
> k^m.tom,
> > reanalysed as a simplex primitive term, no longer synchronically
> > connected with *dek^m.(t). When the other terms for decads were
> > restructured (compounds into phrases), '20' resisted change in
> several
> > branches and became independent, just like '100'. It was

therefore

> > available as a counting unit.
> >
>
> When people still used cheques and mail orders in Denmark, in the
> field that says 'write sum in letters' you were supposed, to

preclude

> ambiguity, to use a _decimal_ system (at least for decades over
> twenty). Since it was used nowhere else, it was made up from

scratch,

> with no phonological modifications:
>
> treti, firti, femti, seksti, syvti, otti, niti
>
> (but cf. 'fire' "4").
>
> I have no idea where this originated. A wild guess: The

Scandinavian

> currency union (approx 1870 - WWI)?
>

Rusian 40 is quite diferent that other numerals.
Are the numbers 4, 7 and 17 somehow special?

How the 17 get special status? It wasn't after Gaus 17-gon
construction.

>
> Torsten