Re: Telona number system

Well, I'm amazed how much fun everyone seems to be having with my
little number system - I never imagined it would excite so much
controversy!  Thanks to Mike and Roger particularly for their
contributions.

> [RM] I certainly look forward to JK's fuller explanation.
How could I resist?  I'll put the full details in a separate post, but
I'll respond here to a few of the more peripheral issues.

Sarah Marie Parker-Allen wrote:
> It might not need a base-system in order to say what a number is,
> but you probably ought to have that decided before anyone starts
> trying to develop rockets and such with it.
That's true, certainly.  I haven't done any sort of conculturing or
diachronic stuff (yet), but I'd sort of imagined that this system
would have started out in a fairly primitive society with the one-word
numbers, or at least some of them.  The larger numbers would have been
invented ad hoc, according to a simple multiplicative rule.  (Such a
rule would be the natural thing in Telona - if you operate on 'apple'
with 'six' to get 'six apples', then operating on 'six apples' with
'two' should give you 'two lots of six apples', and that fits with the
syntax.)  Then, as larger and larger numbers became needed, the rules
would have become codified (or actually grammaticalised?).

Eventually, the present situation would have come about, whereby the
'traditional' way of counting is only used for numbers up to, say,
sixty or eighty (learned in school, rather like the alphabet or times
tables), or for ceremonial purposes where everyone knows what number
you're talking about.  I didn't mention it before, but the normal way
of expressing numbers over about eighty is to use a translation of the
decimal system.  For example, to say 'One thousand, nine hundred and
eighteen students entered the university this year.' one would use an
expression corresponding to 'ten ten ten plus nine ten ten plus nine
two', while to say 'In the year nineteen eighteen the armistice was
declared.', the traditional expression could be used.

Roger Mills wrote:
> One thing that puzzled me, is that the number names could be
> somewhat variable-- e.g. 36 is 9*4.  But could it also be 6^2? or
> 18*2, or why not 12*3, since 24 is 12*2 and 48 is 12*4 (why not 6*4,
> 6*8 resp. for these???).
I'll address this in my full post (when I get round to it).  There are
reasons!

> I think the people who speak this language
> must be mathematical geniuses, and preoccupied with prime numbers--
> who else could figure out that 1918 could be described as a multiple
> of 7*2 *{ru 17*4}.  To me, that's perverse/devilish brain-wiring
> :-)) and quite fascinating.
Even if I am to be forced into conculturing :), I'm afraid that I'd
envisage a much more boring state of affairs.  As I said above, the
traditional system would only be used for large numbers when the
meaning would be clear and no-one would have to go and look anything
up.  <flight of fantasy> ... although the idea of a race with hard-
wired networks of neurones dedicated to performing quantum
computations to factorise large numbers in polynomial time - now that
sounds interesting ... </fof>  (If anyone thinks they might want to
use that idea as the basis of some sort of sci-fi literature - take
it.  It's yours. ;-)))) )

> And now that I think of it-- "one" was not used at all in the
> multiples (obviously, since *1 is trivial); it's only occurrence
> must be in statements like "I  want to buy (just) one...X".  The
> vocabulary could probably be tinkered with so as to eliminate the
> word entirely.
Except that Telona doesn't have anything like articles, or even a
grammatical singular-plural distinction, so the word 'one' (or rather
a group of words with related singular meanings) is pretty crucial.
But the point is valid.

> Another thing I wonder about-- if they have separate symbols for
> numbers [...]
Oh, a long, long way off for now, my friend. :)

And finally, Mike Ellis wrote:
>> And now that I think of it-- "one" was not used at all [...] The
>> vocabulary could probably be tinkered with so as to eliminate the
>> word entirely.
>
> ru zero!
That has a kind of perfect, crystalline beauty which touches me deeply
... afraid I won't be using it, though. ;)

Jonathan.

[reply to jonathan underscore knibb at hotmail dot com]
===
'O dear white children casual as birds,
Playing among the ruined languages...'
Auden/Britten, 'Hymn to St. Cecilia'

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