From: Richard Wordingham
To:
cybalist@yahoogroups.com
>--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "petusek" <petusek@...> >wrote:
>> From: "Richard Wordingham" :
>> >--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Exu Yangi" ><exuyangi@...>
>>wrote:
>
>> >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
><snip>
>Richard:>>> >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.
>
>> >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'.
>
>Petusek:
>> I see. So, do you think it was due to alliteration? (As for
>Japanese, I
>> mean)
>
>Richard:
>Neither the Japanese system, nor the Nama system, which I quote from
>your earlier post, show any regularity in the formation, if that is
>what it is.
>
>Nama:
>1 /gui 2 /gaw
>3 !nona 6 !nani (though, alternatively, in !Gora !nani-b =
>"thumb")
>4 haka 8 //haisa (dual -sa seems to imply "4x2")
>
>Thus it seems quite plausible that the alliterative 'doubling' system
>has been built up by a choice of appropriate variants or even new
>words, as we might even see with _!nani-b_ above.
>
>How sure are you of your Nama forms? In www.zompist.com/numbers.htm
>they are given as:
>
>1 /úí 2 /ám
>3 !noná 6 !naní
>4 hàká 8 //xáísá
>
Petusek:
Well, my Nama numbers are from Gerhard Böhm's "Khoe ~ Kowap. Einführung in
die Sprache den Hottentoten. Nama - Dialekt. Wien: Afro-Pub", since I am no
Khoisan expert, I can hardly claim Böhm lies :-), what about reliability of
the zompist site (not that I want to say it is mistaken)? Perhaps, I am a
little unreliable as I made a mistake with "8", but not with "1" as Böhm
really transcribes it /gui. As for the tone marks, Böhm does not include
them, because they are not necessary for his conclusions, therefore I could
not include them, either, as I didn't know them exactly.
Have you got any knowledge of how relevant tone is in Nama and what its
historical implications are? We would have to thoroughly analyse
(etymologize) the expressions. I have no insight in Khoisan phonology,
morphophonology nor morphonology, so I have no idea of what changes one
should expect when various affixes come to the root or stem.
Richard:
>(I'm not complaining about what appears to be the suppression of tone
>marks.) The parallelism is then less striking. In any case, don't
>the initials of '4' and '8' contrast as non-click and click - surely
>a big difference. The numbers for 1 to 3 as I quote them seem to be
>the same as the Proto-Central Khoisan (PCK) forms.
>
>Nama '8' as a dual certainly seems plausible - compare tAu.//eî (sp?)
>||kai '4'. (Are ||k and //x equivalent spellings?) The Nharo
>numerals are cognate to Nama, and it has //kaisa '8'. Another IE-PCK
>parallel!
Petusek:
As for the many clicks (by the way, in the IPA chart, I could not find any
difference between | and /, maybe / if an italic form), to what extent is
their difference phonological? This is an important question, because if we
compare the various zompist examples, we get several regular changes in PCK
> daughter languages:
PCK: |-
->
t'Oxoku: |k-
Nama,etc.: /-
Korana, etc.: |-
etc. but irregularities, too:
Hietso: k- or |k-
Kxsoe: /g- or //g-
G//abake: k- or /k-
etc., a thorough investigation is necessary to claim anything, but we can
speculate (I may be pretty wrong), that something had to cause |- to become
k- in one case and |k- in another case. These cases, however, have something
in common: if there are two different realizations of the PCK click, the
"unclicked" is always in the numeral "1" (as for the probable cognates of
Nama), does that mean anything???
If we compare hàkà and //kaisa (Nharo) or hàká and //xáísá, and if we take
into account the dual suffix -sa, we might imagine "8" < * hkAsa (or
h'kAsa?) < ** hàkA-sA By the way, what influence on the vowel quality (or
even consonant quality) does the tone have (or vice versa!)? (what if the
consonantal group of *h(?)k lead to what is _//x_ now?)
Moreover, the intial consonant change in "8" may be analogical (see "9"),
just as it is in Slavic 9 and 10. This might possibly support the
alliteration idea, too, as alliteration, in my view, is just one of many
kinds of analogy.
Maybe it is just too constrained...
Petusek