Re: Do Eskimos count like New Guineans?

On Jan 19, 12:57 pm, "Brian M. Scott" <b.sc...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Fri, 18 Jan 2008 20:47:18 -0800 (PST), richard01
<richardparke...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<news:e78ff2b4-a465-47b5-8a6d-4a2236ad24ec@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
in sci.lang:

On 19 Jan, 12:17, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[...]

My point is that made-up words are vanishingly rare.
If you want to exclude one of the two standard examples,
you double the strength of my point.- Hide quoted text -
What about television, that seems to have come from two
separate languages

What about it?  It's built from existing material by a
standard word-formation process, composition.

OK, so television was not a very good example of a genuine neologism.

But consider this one. The Yele are isolated 'East Papuan' speakers in
a whole sea of Austronesian speakers east of New Guinea. They use
strings of shells to represent a 'money' system. That is, they caught
onto the idea of trading something inherently valueless for real
things like a bride price or a feast return.

Unlike others in the Bismarcks and Solomons, they don't count their
shell money strings by 'bunches' like one hand-to-elbow length
(cubit), one double arm-length (fathom), but individually, one by
one.

So they had to make up words for very high numbers to accomodate this

The Yele high numbers go:
1000 - yili
2000 - dwong
3000 - teme
4000 - dab
5000 - mwa yili
6000 - mwa dwong
7000 - mwa teme
8000 - mwa dab
9000 - mwadi
10000 - mwadi mwa dab

'A curious feature of this last series of terms, the combination of
the terms for 8000 and 9000 to express 10000, is explained in the
legend, which attributes the invention of counting to Wonajo, who
wished to count the 'nko' (shell money) that he had made. Having
counted up to 9000 he grew weary, and, unable to think of a fresh word
for 10000 adopted the novel, if unmathematical, device of using in
juxtaposition the words for the last two thousands.' (Armstrong,
1928,p.78).


regards

Richard
.

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