From: petusek
Message: 34179
Date: 2004-09-16
>--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Exu Yangi" <exuyangi@...> >wrote:I see. So, do you think it was due to alliteration? (As for Japanese, I
>
>Exu Yangi:
>> > >one = Chinese erh = Japanese i(chi)
>> > >two = chinese ni = japanese ni
>> > >three = chinese sam = japanese san
>> > >four = chinese shi = japanese shi
>> > >five = chinese go = japanese go
>
>Petusek:
>> >Thanks for the list of the first five numerals in Japanese. In Old
>> >Japanese,
>> >the first decade was organized in pairs:
>> >
>> >1 fitö 2 futa
>> >3 mi 6 mu
>> >4 yö 8 ya
>> >5 i-tu 10 töwö
>>
>> I have seen that. Kind of like organizing English as
>
>> one
>> two three
>> four five
>> six seven
>> eight n-ine
>> ten
>>
>> and then saying that the first letters must make them related.
>> Ummm ...
>
>Well there does seem a cross-linguistic tendency for short runs with >
>the same initial letter. Has anyone checked the statistics on it?
>It's not as simple as it seems, for it seems that numbers above 5 can >
>share a common morpheme.
>
>Which Chinese dialect is quoted above? The Middle Chinese for >'5' is
>reconstructed as something like *ngú, previously unvoiced or
>preaspirated, so Thai for example has converted the Proto-Chinese >
>sequence *hŋá` *gruk 'five, six' to an alliterating haa 51 hok >22.
>(Forms taken from tables indexed at
>http://www.zompist.com/numbers.shtml .) With the addition >of /sawng
>15/ 'two', the sequence 2, 3, 4 is now an alliterative run.
>
>Perhaps there is a similar organising tendency behind the Japanese
>numbers, though it seems a lot rarer. I suppose it's possible that
>pre-PIE had such a 'system' - all that's left is the similarity of
>the words for '4' and '8'.
>
>Richard.