Re: Ebisedian number system (I)

On Wed, Jul 17, 2002 at 12:34:28PM -0700, JS Bangs wrote:
[snip]
> > For numbers 2 through 9, the 3- prefix is simply the Ebisedian plural
> > prefix; in compounds, this 3- is dropped. (_3_ is [@\], not to be confused
> > with the number "3" :-).)
>
> The 3- prefix seems odd to me.  I don't know of any language that
> regularly marks numbers themselves as plural (although words modified by
> numbers may be mandatorily plural).  It also is semantically
> dubious--"eight" is not a plural concept, but a single concept that
> denotes a collection of other things, like "herd" or "pile."
Yeah, I struggled for a while with this. I thought it would be nice if the
plurality of a number was expressed as a syntactic plural. But now that
you mention it, I might just drop the plural prefix altogether, and only
mark it on the modified noun. I did find it a bit redundant myself, which
is why I elected to drop the prefix in compounds (which I wouldn't if it
were really "part of" the number noun).

> > So far so good. Nothing unusual here. (Except perhaps for the fact that
> > _y'i_ is technically a nullar noun; so does it mean "zero" or the absence
> > of zero? Or zero is just the absence of something, anything. :-P)
>
> Exactly. This same duplicity applies to the curious marking of the
> numerals as plural.
Yeah, it's probably more useful if I adopted a proper singular noun for
the concept of "zero". But having said that, _y'i_ is a word riddled with
inside puns. The prefix y- occurs in another place: on the nullar form of
the subordinating particle _ni_. The _i_ suffix is the mandatory locative
noun suffix. There is nothing (i.e., zero) between the prefix and the
suffix, which is just a funny (if contrived) way of saying "zero".

But to be honest, _y'i_ came about because I chose to mark number on the
number nouns. If I decide to drop that and just use proper singulars
instead, I'll probably revert to my original word for zero, _ve'i_, which
isn't quite as riddled with contrived puns. :-P

> > Now comes the interesting part. These basic numbers are augmented by a
> > system of "triads", which are based on powers of 3. The triad system lets
> > you count above 9, and also introduces alternative words for 3, 6, and 9.
> > (snip)
>
> I like this system.  It's clever and allows for a good deal of
> flexibility and vagueness where appropriate. However . . .
>
> > That's it for the basic numbering system. Thoughts? Suggestions? Comments?
> > Criticisms? Flames? :-)
> >
> > (ObTeaser: in the next post, we shall consider, aside from ordinals and
> > cardinals, the all-important question of "how does the Ebisedi answer the
> > question, `how many fingers do you have'?")
>
> This, to me, seems like it should have been answered before you ever did
> any of the other work. I know about the weird 3-based physics of the
> Ebisedan conworld, but unless they actually have 3 fingers I don't think
> that this would matter to them.  People learn to count long before they
> learn a whit about physics, and people generally start counting with their
> fingers. Thus, while I like the general design of the system, I'm
> suspicious of the fact that it revolves around 3 if the speakers'
> physiology doesn't demand it.  It strikes me as that frivolous, banal
> "consistency" that we argued over a little while ago.
[snip]

I *did* think about that. :-) It's really not that frivolous, if you
consider the following proposed internal history of the number words:

The "basic numbers", 0 through 9, were the "original" number words in the
language. These are pretty regular as far as languages go (except for the
odd nullar/plural marking which I think I'm now inclined to discard). I
might add a few more basic numbers later, if I decide to adopt this story,
just to make it more probable.  :-) In terms of learning to count, the
basic numbers are what people learn first; the triad system is learned
later. I might extend the basic numbers up to 12, perhaps, or 17, just for
kicks. But originally, it was only up to 5, which would be consistent with
counting on one hand.

The whole triad business came about when the early Ebisedi became more
sophisticated and started developing a philosophy rife with 3's and 5's.
(It's not just the physics; general physical observations, which does show
a triple-tendency, have imposed themselves into the philosophy of the
Ebisedi.)  The original meaning of _kre'i_ may very well have been the
equivalent of "several", or "a couple of", without being fixed at any
particular number. And a system of counting by grouping into handfuls,
similar to the triad system, may have been in place already. It was with
the rise of the color-symbolic philosophy of the early Ebisedi that
_krei'i_ came to specifically mean "three" (the connotation being, of
course, that three constitute a "unit" group), and that the other triads
of the series became fixed as powers of 3. They could very well have been
vague collections of arbitrary magnitudes, before this base-3 system was
adopted.


T

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