Re: Survey of conlangs: numbers

On Wed, 26 Nov 2003 18:51:41 -0500, Robert Jung <RobertMJung@...>
wrote:

> For those of you who have conlangs, I would appreciate it if you send me
> (RobertMJung@hotmail.com) your favourite conlang's/conlangs' numbers,
> from 0-10 (or higher if you deem it necessary). If your conlang is a
> posteriori, please specify the source language, and, if possible, the
> original word in the source language.
>
> Comments pertaining to the grammar of numbers of your conlang(s) are also
> welcome.
>
There's another person on the list who's doing the same thing, by the name
of Janko Gorenc. You may wish to pool resources. Here's a highly modified
version of what I sent to him:

Here are some "rough guesses" at the cardinal numbers 1-10, used for
counting objects that do not use one of the alternative counting systems
(yet to be devised). Note that they are subject to change if and when my
knowledge of the number system improves. Each number takes the appropriate
gender suffix (and other case-complex clitics) for the objects being
counted. This is usually "-t", "-n", or "-p", but not exclusively.

The language name is Thagojian. It is a Classical language, spoken at the
border of Egypt and Israel, more or less.

The source language is Proto-Indo-European -- more specifically, a
laryngeal-retaining variant of the satem branch. It will have borrowings
from both Semitic and Egyptian/Coptic just as soon as I learn enough about
both language groups.

It is written natively in a mixture of Greek, Coptic and Hebrew characters,
plus a single glyph of unknown origin, shown here with the Roman letter
"s", which it closely resembles.
 ASCII/SAMPA                     UTF-8

1   oy"no     /o1_^no/        oÿno    /oɨ̯no/   ου̂νο
2   do'wo     /dOu_^o/        dówo    /dɔu̯o/   δωŝο
3   tre'ye'   /tr\Ei_^E/      tréyé   /tɹɛi̯ɛ/  τρηι̂η
4   pe"tre'   /p@tr\E/        pëtré   /pətɹɛ/   πיτρη
5   pe"mpe'   /p@mpE/         pëmpé   /pəmpɛ/   πיμπη
6   se"s's'e" /s@S@/          sëśśë   /səʃə/    ϲיϣϣי
7   se'ptimi  /sEptimi/       séptimi /sɛptimi/ ϲηπτιμι
8   o's'towo  /OStou_^o/      óśtowo  /ɔʃtou̯o/ ωϣτοŝο
9   heni"     /hen1/          hénï    /hɛnɨ/    ϩηνυ
10  de'ns'i   /dEnSi/         dénśi   /dɛnʃi/   δηνϣι
 I seriously think that some further simplification will occur, probably
se'ptimi > se'pti and o's'towo > o's'to. Maybe also se'pti > se'pte" (and
o's'to > o's'te" ?) under analogy from se"s's'e", as happened to the vowels
of pe"mpe' under the influence of pe"tre' (or was it the other way around?
where are my notes?).

I might make all these numbers into "front harmony" words, and make them
harmonise with the word they modify.

It has crossed my mind that se'ptimi might > sebmi > sebme", but that's
just idle speculation at this time.

Questions, comments, suggestions?




Paul

Reply