Re: [tied] Re: IE right & 10

Rob:

> At least for the purposes of playing Devil's Advocate, how is there
> conclusively "no **dek- meaning 'ten'"? More on this below/later.

Well, have you seen it? I haven't.


Rob:

> The Uralic reconstruction looks problematic to me (but then again I'm
> just an amateur). What's its result in e.g. Finnish?

I don't know. I didn't propose it.

> However, what's the evidence for the supposed prefixal **de- "one"?

Altaic seems to show a similar word. I think it's related to *dekm which
would mean that the 'prefix' is an IE-Altaic isogloss. It produces
Manchu /zhuwan/, Old Japanese /töwö/, Classical Mongolian /arban/ and
Turkish /on/. The Proto-Steppe word would have been *t?u-kum (or
*t?u-k&m if there is a fourth vowel *&). In Altaic, the *k would soften
out of existence with only a glide *w in its place and ejectives like *t?
regularly deglottalize in Altaic so there shouldn't be a problem in the
connection. This would support *t?u = "one"... but interestingly we find
something similar on the Tyrrhenian side of IndoTyr in Etruscan as /tHu/.

> Perhaps (Pre-)IE's speakers counted routinely from the left hand to
> the right hand.

We went over the reason for this connection before but while that's
possible, there still is no **dek- which by itself means "ten" nor does
anyone on this Forum no anything about an instance of **dek- meaning
"right side", only *deks-. A connection can't be logically established
between the two roots at all.


Rob:

> Ultimately, all numerals come from body-counting terms. But the
> origins for many of these are buried in prehistory.

That's an unprovable assertion. We don't know that for certain at all.


= gLeN