Re: Payngo = Fist & Austronesian Numerals

"richard01" <richardparker01@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In Indo-European, the problem (or the opportunity to study it) simply
doesn't arise - out of 295 languages only one group, Vedda, hunter-
gatherers in Ceylon, still has a 5+1, etc system, not a monomorphemic
decimal system. Now please don't tell me that they're innovative.

The traditional Welsh system is approximately a mixed base 5 and base 20, but the numbers in the second quintet are suppletive survivals from the apparently decimal Indo-European system. Thus: _un_ '1', _chwech_ '6', _un ar ddeg_ '11', _un ar bymtheg_ '16', with the word for '15' being decimal - _pymtheg_ '15' is clearly a compound of _pump_ '5' and _deg_ '10'. The word for '20' _ugain_ is now an independent morpheme, but it is not momomorphemic in origin, containing elements meaning 'two' and 'ten' and generally believed to be congate with them.

Then of course we have the mixed decimal and base 120 system evidenced in Old Norse - English 'hundred' is reported to have originally meant the long hundred (120), as in the slightly debased hundredweight (112 pounds). English had _hundteontig_ which was unambiguously 100 and _hundendleofantig_ '110' > _eleventy_.

Richard01 also wrote:

This is like (Austronesian) Sediq Taroko from Formosa: - kingal - daha
- teru - sepac - rima - mumuteru - mupitu - mumusepac - mungari -
maxal where 6 and 8 = (2)x3 and (2)x4.
They have a word for 10, but their unrelated word for 20 - mpusal
shows that they once had a 1-5-20 system.

Is _mpusal_ unrelated to the words for '10'? It bears some resemblance to PAN *sa-puluk. French _vingt_ is monomorphemic in French (isn't it?), but surely on its own it does not evidence the partially vigesimal nature of French numbers.

What are we to make of the vigesimal elements of the English system? We have 'three score years and ten', and 'fifteen hundred' might also be reckoned as such.

Richard.

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