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From: alderson@netcom15.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: Number word etymology (was: Why is a circle 360 degrees?)
In-Reply-To: mcv@pi.net's message of Wed, 16 Oct 1996 14:56:49 GMT
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In article <542suv$bom@halley.pi.net> mcv@pi.net (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
writes:

>The reconstructed IE system of numerals is clearly decimal, although there are
>in fact reasons to believe that the numbers 6-9 were more recent additions to
>the system.

>8 *okto: is a dual form of *okt- "4 (fingers)"

Well, it certainly has the *form* of a dual, but of what?  Not the word for
"4", which has a labiovelar, not a palatal:  *k{^w}et-wor (to use a TeX-like
notation for the superscript "w").  These two series do not interchange.

>9 *(e)newn might be related to *new- "new": the "new" number, cf. Basque
>berr-ogei "new twenty" = 40.

The word for "9" is unrelated to the word for "new".  The "(e)" in the recon-
structed form cited above is one way of indicating that the word for "9" began
with a so-called laryngeal (a class of consonants which caused a number of
vocalic affects in the daughter languages, such as initial vowels in Greek
where none exist in the other families:  Greek _ennea_ "9", Skt._ navam_, Latin
_novem_ < *{x_1}newm, to use a more familiar notation).

The word for "new" does *not* begin with a laryngeal:  Gk. _neos_, Lat. _novus_
< *newo-.  The o-stem formation of the word for "new" (a late development with-
in the language) combined with the fact that Indo-European never formed words
by means of prefixes provides all the evidence we need that the word for "9" is
not related to the word for "new".
-- 
Rich Alderson   You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
                of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
                logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
                know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
                as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
                what not.
                                                --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@netcom.com                               _The Notion Club Papers_
