Re: Mille (thousand)

Francesco,

You might want to consider interpreting Shang pictograph as indicating the
place on the human body to be touched to indicate '1000'.

Body-touch counting is very old and widespread.

Patrick

----- Original Message -----
From: "Francesco Brighenti" <frabrig@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, March 08, 2008 6:22 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: Mille (thousand)






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


> I will add that Chinese qian1 [tçhjän]
> possibly from *gho-y-in
> tends to prove that
> something like *gh_l or *gh_zl- makes sense
> but starting with -sl- the result should be qian4.
> So a proto-form is not clear *ghezlo/*gheslo ?
> although the meaning is clear.

Excuse me? What are you postulating: a "Proto-Sinitic-IE" numeral
1000? What would this proto-form *gho-y-in represent? An early
borrowing from IE?

In any event, the Chinese proto-form is likely to have been *chi:n-
'1000, to be a thousand'. It may also have some cognates within the
Tibeto-Burman family:

http://tinyurl.com/32rbeu
http://tinyurl.com/3xd3hj

In Shang shell and bone inscriptions the corresponding character is
千, a pictograph of a person with a line drawn at the shin to
indicate extension forward, suggesting that 1000 = number reached by
counting on and on. Apparently this has no conceptual and semantic
relation whatsoever with PIE *g^Heslo-, especially is the latter is
related, as Piotr has suggested, with *g^Héso:r/*g^Hesr- 'hand'.

Regards,
Francesco