From: andythewiros
Message: 65244
Date: 2009-10-15
>Pardon my ignorance, but I don't know what 'OCR'ed' means --?
>
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "andythewiros" <anjarrette@> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > --- 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?
>
> See below.
>
> >
> > >
> > > 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:
>
> That's where my OCR'ed paper Pokorny has them too.
>Fine, I understand and respect your proposal, but I like the idea of 'ten' coming from simple always available objects that virtually always have ten appendages, the hands. If the origin of 'ten' is to remain moot, I will remain partial to the idea of it being related to Gmc 'hand'. And as far as the origin of 'hand', I suspect there is no further etymology than the meaning 'hand' -- isn't there no further etymology than the meaning 'foot' for *pe(:)d-/po(:)d- or the meaning 'eye' for *okW- or the meaning 'ear' for *aus-?
> >
>
> > > 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?
>
> More like "handful".
>
> > Why not just "hand", and then go along with Pokorny in making
> > *dek^mt- a reduced form of *dwe/dwo k^mt (or *k^omt)?
>
> I 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.
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/65159
>I'm really surprised that so basic a notion as 'hand' would have to be borrowed from elsewhere, like FU. The other u-stem nouns and adjectives, I've seen IE etymologies for most of them, I'm pretty sure (at least for *ferþ/ðu/furðu, *grunþu/ðu, *xaþu/xaðu, *xunxru/xunGru, *laGu, *þursu/zu, *þranxu/Gu). But always remember my opinions are mostly comparatively uninformed.
>
> > Maybe Gmc 'hand' was originally a consonant stem, and then became
> > an u-stem because of the accusative endings -um and -uns, like
> > Gothic <fo:tus>?
>
> Note the section names
> 'Die maskulinen u-Stämme mit grammatischem Wechsel'
> and
> 'U-stämmige Adjektiva mit grammatischem Wechsel'
> in
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/62159
> That list contains several I know to be loans (eg. plough) and I suspect they all are, which would mean that Proto-Proto-Germanic had no mobile-accent nouns (but did have mobile-accent verbs). One might therefore suspect the -ú- to be not IE, and further an adjective-forming suffix in the donor language, so that *hanðu- (< ** kantú-) was originally an adjective to **kant-.
>
>