From: Torsten
Message: 65235
Date: 2009-10-14
>See below.
>
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Torsten" <tgpedersen@> wrote:
> ><snip>
> > Bundle (sort of).
>
> So was the idea of 'ten' 'a bundle of fingers', or was a 'hand' 'a
> bundle of fingers', or 'the bundled fingers (fist)', or something
> else?
>That's where my OCR'ed paper Pokorny has them too.
> >
> > And the really interesting bundles:
> > *k^mtóm and de-k^mto- (too large in Pokorny for a quote).
>
> Where are these in Pokorny? I looked for *k^em- and *k^m(t)- but
> could not find them. Under *de-k^mto- I only found the following
> note:
>More like "handful".
> > And the answer to Andrew's question about the "ten" word:
> >
> > Russian (and other Slavic languages, AFAIK) has
> > dvenadtsat', trinadtsat' etc lit.
> > "two on ten", "three on ten" etc meaning
> > "twelve", "thirteen" etc.
> >
> > Suppose PIE had 'dwó do komt', 'trí do komt' vel sim. (cf. the
> > Lat. -gint-, Gk. -kont- for decades), then by false division
> >*dé-komt- "ten". Voilà!
> >
> Great, but did *komt- mean "bundle of fingers" or "bundle of hands"
> or something else?
> Why not just "hand", and then go along with Pokorny in makingI like my proposal better. The *kom-t- thing means "ten" in Volga-Finnic and "hundred" and "decade" in IE. Nowhere does it mean "five". Obviously it must mean "group" (of something) in in a field where decadic numbers were preferred. And that was in the field of military venture / hunting.
> *dek^mt- a reduced form of *dwe/dwo k^mt (or *k^omt)?
> Maybe Gmc 'hand' was originally a consonant stem, and then becameNote the section names
> an u-stem because of the accusative endings -um and -uns, like
> Gothic <fo:tus>?