Re: [tied] All of creation in Six and Seven

> >While the numeral "seven" in IE contains fossilized Semitic suffixes that
> >show that it was the masculine form, the numeral "six" would seem to
> >correlate with the _feminine_ form. (PS: For those who forgot or don't
> >know, *-t- is normally a feminine suffix in Semitic but in numerals, it is
> >the reverse and is used to mark the _masculine_ form. This is because
> >the seemingly feminine numeral goes with the masculine noun and
> >vice versa -- a kind of gender-pairing agreement.)
>
> This applies to the numbers 3-10 (1 is an adjective with normal gender
> agreement and 2 is a noun in the dual with dual case and gender agreement).
> The gender disagreement in the numbers 3-10 is in fact only apparent. The
> suffix -at(u) is not only a feminine marker, but also a plural/collective.

How do you get that? It is contrary to e.g Classical Arabic cases like
shajarun 'tree (collective/material)' vs. shajaratun '(one piece of) tree'
or H.ajarun 'stone, rock (collective)' vs H.ajaratun '(one individual)
rock' and other cases with animals.

> The noun being counted is in the genitive plural, so "3 X's" in the
> masculine was:
>
> *Tala:T-at-u X-i:-n
>
> with the numeral in the nom. of the plural collective (-at-u) and the noun
> in the gen. of the (broken) plural (-i:-).
>
> The feminine we would have expected to be:
>
> **Tala:T-at-u X-a:t-i,
>
> but is in fact:
>
> **Tala:T-u X-a:t-i,
>
> with deletion of one instance of the suffix -a(:)t-. We can compare the
> deletion in the feminine plural of the plural definiteness marker -n.

But this analysis leaves 11-19 unexplained because there we do have
similar (if not identical - just an intervening 3ashrun) opposition
between the masc. and fem. forms but the noun being counted is in the
acc. sg.. No construct or gen. pl. here (but I am not sure it goes back
to PSem of course).

all the best,
Harald