From: petusek
Message: 34197
Date: 2004-09-17
>--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "petusek" <petusek@...> wrote:.>> really transcribes it /gui.
>> 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
>Oh, great, I hoped it would be like that. So, does this support or disagree
>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.