Re: Payngo = Fist & Austronesian Numerals

"richard01" <richardparker01@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 23 Dec, 03:38, "Richard Wordingham" <jrw0...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

The NE Kevalan and Ketagalan,
both supposed descendants of Muish, do not have a reflex of *puluq. Of
the other supposed descendents, Tai-Kadai doesn't have one, except a
single syllable correspondence in 3 minor languages, but MP, of
course, has.

Ostapirat reconstructs Proto-Kra *pwlot, so it may be just the final consonant that doesn't match. (What is the Kra reflex of final Austronesian *q?) It seems to be reflected in all the Tai-Kadai languages that haven't adopted Chinese numerals, so in Gelao, Lachi, Laha, Paha, Buyang and Pubiao (a.k.a. Laqua) from Ostapirat's thesis - 6 languages. On the other hand, this set is only the Kra languages (Kra = Benedict's Kadai less Hlai).

In fact, the Kra group seems to have reflexes of PAN '6' to '10':

'6' PAN *enem Proto-Kra *x-nam (x = voicelessness except in Paha - Section 7.1.3.2)
'7' PAN *pitu Proto-Kra *C-tju (C = unidentiable non-nasal initial, causing voiced fricatives in Paha - Section 7.1.1)
'8' PAN *walu Proto-Kra *m-ru
'9' PAN *Siwa Proto-Kra *s-Gwa (G = voiced velar fricative)
'10' PAN *sa-puluq Proto-Kra *pwlot

(I've put in section numbers from Ostapirat's Ph.D. thesis in case I need to refer back to these. I don't find his conception of Proto-Kra syllable structure easy to abstract from the details.)

He doesn't, of course, impugn *PAn, but proposes a whole bunch of
innovations at the top of the tree, evolving, number by number, back
to the ancestral form. He seems quite unaware of the few hundred other
>Austronesian number systems that seem to be doing the same.

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.

Counting by twenties looks like a borrowing from Norse, along with the word 'score'. It's a parallel system, not the earlier system.

Richard.

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