John,
yesterday (2006/January/18 Wednesday) I sent you a longish and
comprehensive OFFLIST reply to the following post of yours.
When I hit the "SEND" button, Yahoo asked me to confirm my password;
and I do not know whether it actually "sent" my reply to you.
Did you get it?
Thanks,
Tom H.C. in MI
tomhchappell@yahoo.com
--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, John Vertical <johnvertical@H...>
wrote:
>
> tomhchappell wrote:
>
> > > Descendants of Latin numbers occur so often in English
> > > that they can be considered separate roots.
> >
> >Yes; so, the simplest English word) derived from each Latin number
> >(other than 1 or 2) that is not obviously related to an English
> >number, should be considered "a primitive non-cardinal relating to
a
> >number other than 1 or 2". Right?
>
> Right, unless one wants to call the root forms cardinals (compare
> "tripartite" ~ "three-parter")
> [snip almost everything]
>
> Aggh, sloppy writing. Yes.
>
>
> > >> these two verbs have two meanings.
> > >> One meaning is "to make half" or "to make 1/4";
> > >> (*) but "halve" also means "two divide into two
> > >> (nearly) equal pieces", and "quarter" also means "to
> > >> divide into four (nearly) equal pieces."
> > >
> > > Hmm, true. I think this 2nd meaning is not even really directly
> > > reciprocal; you did write "to divide into 2 parts" and not "to
> > > divide into halves".
> > > I mean, if we assume it IS reciprocal, what would be the natural
> > > number equvalent? "To divide into 1/2 parts?" Would that be "to
put
> > > two similar things together" or what?
> >
> >Interesting question. I suppose it could mean "join pairs of
similar
> >things together so that you end up with half as many separate
pieces
> >as you started out with, but without discarding any of them."
> >
> >I don't know; does "marry" or "mate" cover this idea?
>
> Or just "pair". However, none of those convey conjoining (and yes I
know
> halving doesn't *have* to involve breaking), and "to halve" sounds
like a
> more basic concept anyway. Who knows, maybe it's the original root
word and
> "half" was derived from it, and not the other way.
>
>
> >Tom H.C. in MI
>
> Also, thanks for all the interesting information that got snipped
from this
> reply.
>
> John Vertical
>