The palatal sham :) (Re: [tied] Re: Albanian (1))

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, enlil@... wrote:

> Dan:
> > However neat your story (or two stories) on pure linguistic
> > grounds, it seems to me to defy common sense that I. E.
> > would borrow the word for "seven" from Semitic, wait a thousand
> > years or so and then borrow the word for "six".

<Snip>

> > Did the words replaced lost I.-E. words or were new concepts?
>
> I severely doubt that IE didn't have words for "six" and "seven"
> before it borrowed them from Semitic. For some reason, many
> people seem to still think that hunter-gatherers are mathematical
> dolts that can't possibly count up to ten. As if "ten" is an
> elitist number that only agricultural peoples may discover,
> a somehow unattainable amount in the mesolithic world. Strange
> how some people think.

It is quite possible that at some stage pre-PIE no more had these
concepts than English speakers have a concept of '17'. In some
languages (even IE languages), the numbers from six on are expressed
as five plus something. Maybe Glen has already commented on this,
but it may be noteworthy that some are tempted to see *ok^toH (or
whatever) as literally 'twice four' and *nowm. 'nine' as being
related to the very similar root *new 'new'.

Pre-PIE speakers may well have come to have unrelated sets of
numbers, originally for use in different domains. Japanese has a
native set and a Chinese set; Thai has a native (mostly Chinese,
actually) and a Pali set. There can be some strange overlaps - in
Thai telphone numbers mostly use native numerals, but the Pali word
(/tho:/ in Thai) is usually used for '2', and unsurprisingly there is
no native word for '0'. Thai offers an interesting example. The
Pali word for '5' occurs in two forms in Thai - /be:n ca/ and /pan/ -
presumably due to different borrowing routes. Possibly something
like this happened in PIE.

> > It's hard to imagine whatever sociological situation led
> > to the borrowing of seven was repeated long after for six.

> Religion and numerological symbology. "Seven" especially is a
> recurrent symbol of the divine in ancient Near-Eastern worldview.
> Not only population and genetics but culture and worldview had
> spread to Europe with the advent of agriculture in the neolithic.
>
> Seven planetary bodies, seven levels of heaven, seven stars of
> the Pleiades, seven doves, seven days a week, Snow White and
> the seven dwarfs, seven-up, seven-eleven, hehehe :) But
> seriously now. Seven is an important number. So was six and was
> especially used in the Bible (also derived from these older
> views) as the opposing "evil" number of Satan. However, I've
> suggested that "six" and "seven" originally represented the
> female and male principle, respectively, and that this is why
> "six" is in the feminine and "seven" is in the masculine form.
> The two numbers added together whether literally or symbolically
> represent wholeness.

This is, however, an argument that they ought to have been borrowed
together.

Richard.