Glen:
>
>Peter:
>> This is interesting. The modern Finnish word for 10 is 'kymmenen'.
>> It's etymology is given as unknown in the sources I have. It is
Well, the FiMd *kümeni "10" might be compared to Yukaghir *kümne- "10" (if -
as Bouda once assumed - Yukaghir forms are not borrowed from Eskimo, eg.
SWAlaska qoln, EGreenland qulin, WGreenland qulit "10", claimed to
originally mean *"the top ones", cf. quleq "the uppermost"; however, Omok
kimnel seems to exclude this possibility)
>> presumed to be fairly recent in Finnish since the original FU
>> speakers had a base 6 number system, [...]
Did they? Can you give me some examples? Not that I object to it, but I have
read recently that, perhaps, FU *ku(u)t(t)i or *kotti "6" and Sm *mËktut "6"
(probably unrelated to each other) both were formed on the same semantical
basis - that "six" equals to "beyond five" (U *kuttE "a back" > MaN Xu:täI
"behind"; U *mukA "back" > Selkup Taz moqoqIt "behind") I am no expert as
far as Uralic languages are concerned, but this seems logical to me.
>
>> Some have speculated that 'kymmen' is related to 'kämmen' hand, but
>> the linguistic evidence is weak.
>
>Funny how some do the same with *penkWe. Must be the same people running
>out of innovative ideas ;)
Well, yes, there are many more ways numeral can be created, despite the
tentative and certainly most frequent (semantic) developement of "hand,
fist etc." > "five", there are languages with completely different ways of
creating numeral five: Chumash yiti -paka "recur-one", Jawony TatkuRaN
TatkuRaN AnTiRiN "2+2+1" etc.
Petusek