Re: [tied] Re: IE right & 10

From: Harald Hammarström
Message: 34450
Date: 2004-10-04

> Otherwise, Proto-Algonquian wouldn't have a number system. Nor Proto-
> Austronesian. Don't think those guys and gals were farmers.

I must confess ignorance on the livelihoods of PAlg. and PAn. speakers,
sorry.

> >> Why should we conclude that they absolutely wouldn't need to?
> >
> > That we don't conclude. All we conclude is that super-unlikely that
> > any had a numeral system of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, many.
>
> Alright. That conclusion I agree with then. However, as I stated before,
> Uralic only has _reconstructable_ numbers up to "6". It has to be
> understood that the term "unreconstructable" doesn't necessarily mean
> "non-existent". For some reason, people get confused.

The reason they get confused is that you wrote

"I think there's a reason why we don't find things above "six".
The reason is a neolithic worldview".

> > No it isn't. (A sample size of say 600 languages anyway).
>
> I think it's not secure. Look at Native American languages for example.
> They all share certain areal features with each other. Naturally so,
> since they have been in close contact with each other on the same
> continent for thousands of years. However, if one took samples from
> only that group because they were the only ones left in the world after
> the bomb hit, one would get a distorted picture of the full spectrum
> of human languages across the globe. We'd end up thinking that the
> world's languages are mostly replete with ejectives, for one thing!

Sure. But I don't see anyone here sampling the Native Am. lgs and
projecting it on the whole language space. The 600 lgs I mentioned
come from Papua, Torres Straits, Andaman and Nicobar islands, Northern
Thailand-Laos, Pre-Bantu Africa, Amazonia, Australia and Tasmania.
Not all of which are areally adjacent.

> So similarly, I can't agree with crabby ol' Brian about there not being
> a difference between the few hunter-gatherer societies left in the world
> today and the many hunter-gatherers that once lived and traded unabated
> by as-yet non-existent settled cultures some 10,000 years ago. As I said
> above, modernization of some sort is practically impossible to avoid
> nowadays. Perhaps the only safe place to preserve a true hunter-gatherer
> culture anymore is the Antarctic or another planet for god's sakes.

Sure, but we may know decently what their langauge looked like before the
modern world made its way into them.

> > Aristotle book XV if I remember correctly.
>
> Thanks, I'll check that one out.

That is "Problemata" btw.

> > 1/1 case at least doesn't disprove my thesis and certainly doesn't
> > support yours.
>
> Proto-Algonquian and Proto-Austronesian, remember?

Can you tell me where I can read about their subsistence patterns?

> > Nonsense. They are vastly different.
>
> Then what do you think IE people were doing some three thousand years
> previous to 4000 BCE? Certainly, the time it took for these people to
> go from being hunter-gatherers to pastoralists couldn't have been
> very long

Certainly, it could be.

> and why would pastoralists be any more prone to having
> number systems than hunter-gatherers?

I don't know the exact reason why but pastoralists do tend to have
more elaborate numeral systems. The reason does not have to be that
they need to count their herds.

> Any particularly cogent reason?
> I realize, of course, that their lifestyles are different but the
> transition between the two ways of living must have taken place amongst
> the IE nonetheless and I hardly think that pastoralism is the reason
> for *okto:u.

Evidence?

> > Pirahã culture is one of the most extreme cases of an culture that
> > is not interested in technology or intellectual achievement [...]
>
> Then perhaps what you're suggesting is that the world-view or the raison
> d'etre of a society more likely shapes whether they feel a need for
> numbers than environment or lifestyle.

Yes, at least when considering the Piraha~ it seems to be the reason.

> So with that idea, not knowing what the overall views were of ancient
> people speaking languages like Proto-Uralic, it would be in that
> respect especially unfair to assume that they couldn't have a number
> system past 'six' if lifestyle is not a factor here.

I've never assumed they couldn't have a numeral system above six.
I however don't agree that 1-6 can be recosntr. for Proto-Uralic
since actually only 2 can be more or less safely reconstructed outside
pFU. I also reject the idea that a possible neolithic worldview
played any role in the fact that we can recosntruct 1-6 but not 7
for pFU.

/Harald