Patterns in Khoisan Numerals (was: Why borrow 'seven'?)

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "petusek" <petusek@...> wrote:

> 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.

It was '2' that was relevant - it ends in [m]. '|am' (ignoring the
tone) is the general Central Khoisan from. I don't know what to
make of the spelling </g> - it seems to be the regular
representative of Central Khoisan *|, but Ehret has [|] (or is that
<|>?) as the regular outcome of Proto-Southern African Khosian
(PSAK) *| in Nama.

There are definitely errors in the zompist forms - the accents and
clicks are not easy to represent unless you're familiar with the
notation, for which there are several variations. The |Xam for '1'
is presumably recorded as <!koai>. Mark Rosenfelder seems to have
misread it as <|koai>; Starostin has normalised it to /!wai/.

> 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?

Ehret reconstructs a 4 tone system (one per mora) for PSAK, with one-
mora words having 5 possible tones. He attributes irregular tone
correspondences to 'morphological operations'.

> 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?

The contrast between <|> and </> seems to just to be a matter of
taste; they both represent a dental click. The same goes for <||>
and <//> - they both represent the lateral click. The origin orf
the variation probably is italicisation. A plain click has a faint
[k] at the end. Clicks have a large array of 'effluxes' - 'zero',
glottal stop, aspiration, strong aspiration, voiced efflux (written
with <g>), nasal efflux, uvular efflux, etc!

> 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???

I think these clickless forms starting with 'k' are all spelling
mistakes! The cited G//abake form took some disproving. G//abake =
Hietschware, which according to Starotsin has |úí for '1'.
Starotsin states that all Central Khoisan languages have a dental
click in the word for '1', so the Hietso forma at zompist is also an
error. Given that the numerals seems to suffix -e, this woud be
consistent with a transcription <|kwie>, for which Zompist has
<kwie>.

On the other hand, there are differences between the initials
of '1' and '2' in //Ng _||we_ (writable _||kwe_) '1' and _!u_ (_!
ku_) or _!?u_ '2' and #Khomani _||oe_ (_||koe_) '1' and _!?u_ '2'.

> 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?)

It is simpler than that. According to Ehret, Proto-SAK *|| (lateral
click, writable ||k), yields Central Khoisan (e.g. Nama) [||kh],
where the 'kh' seems to represent a stronger aspiration than the
plain aspiration written [||h].

Richard.