Re: [tied] Re: IE right & 10

Glen:

>In all, I think that IEists should give up the pursuit of **dkmtom
>nd accept that *dekm is a suppletive root with a quite different form
>fr its non-singular, *komt- (zerograde *kmt-). This in turn would
>simply be derived from Proto-Steppe *k&m-it (yes, I think I will keep
>my "fourth vowel" *& here, rather than my former reconstruction *kumit),
>the singular form being just *k&m or alternatively *t?u-k&m.
>
>> One would think that there would be more evidence of a prefixal *de-
>> than just in the word for "ten."
>
>Yes, one would. Hence, Etruscan /tHu/ "one". I also wonder about the
>origin of IE *dus- which means "bad". If from an aorist verb *deu-s-
>meaning "to abandon", we may semantically derive "bad" from "abandoned".
>If this is permitted, a connection between *dus- and the numeral for
>"one" is possible.
>

As for *de-, A. Erhart also thought IE "10" < *de-k^(o)mt "1x10", where the
original meaning of *k^omt was "Gesamheit der Finger". That agrees with what
you mentioned, Glen, as other decades, Erhart reconstructed, were as follows
(not accepted very much:

*de-k^m°(t) "10" = 1x10
*[d]wi-k^m°t-iH1 "20"=2x10
*triH2-k^omt-H2 "30"=3x10
*kwetur-k^omt-H2 "40"=4x10

(Similar structures can bee found in Indonesian: se-puluh "1x10", dua-puluh
"2x10", tiga-puluh "3x10", empat-puluh "4x10")

The first component (*de) was identified by Erhart in the numeral "2", too
(oh, that sounds good :-)). He reconstructed IE "2" as *deHw = "1x2". He
thought it had originally been no numeral at all, but rather a deictic
particle (cf. Prussian din "he", Avestan dim "him" etc. - see Vladimir N.
Toporov, 1975: Prusskij jazyk. Slovar', I & IV. Moskva: Nauka). There exist
many other reconstructions by many other authors, based on *de + *k^om, but
I cannot them all, anyway, they aren't mine, so it would be a waste of time,
wouldn't it? But if you were interested...

Petusek