Newsgroups: sci.lang
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!newshost.marcam.com!charnel.ecst.csuchico.edu!csusac!csus.edu!netcom.com!alderson
From: alderson@netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: Eleven & Twelve
In-Reply-To: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk's message of Mon, 20 Feb 1995 20:43:17 GMT
Message-ID: <aldersonD4DB50.HF2@netcom.com>
Reply-To: alderson@netcom.com
Fcc: /u52/alderson/postings
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
References: <3hj9ca$mfc@igor.rutgers.edu> <D43Jut.9Gw@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
	<Bm06EWg.whl44@delphi.com> <D4BG87.79z@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, 21 Feb 1995 20:48:36 GMT
Lines: 23
Sender: alderson@netcom20.netcom.com

In article <D4BG87.79z@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
writes:

>In article <Bm06EWg.whl44@delphi.com> William Lemay <whl44@delphi.com> writes:

>>"Twenty" may appear in IE for no more profound a reason than that IE
>>languages early on had a dual, so that there was a word ready to hand
>>for "twenty" as soon as there was one for "ten."

>But in which IE languages is `20' merely the dual of `10'?  And why were the
>duals of `6' to `9' not used as number names?

Off the top of my head, Latin and Greek both show an old neuter dual

	*dwiX-dkmtiX > Latin viginti:, Greek wikosi:/eikosi:

Further, other units of ten are neuter plurals (< collectives).  Szemere'nyi
has a monograph out on Indo-European numeral names which covers this.
-- 
Rich Alderson		[Tolkien quote temporarily removed in favour of
alderson@netcom.com	 proselytizing comment below --rma]

Please support the creation of the humanities hierarchy of newsgroups!
