Re: Tentative Ebisedian number system

 --- "H. S. Teoh" wrote:

> I just had an idea for the upcoming Ebisedian number system. Instead of
> saying "<number> of <noun>", such as "three cows" or "four horses", where
> the number word modifies the noun, Ebisedian will have the *noun* modify
> the *number*.
>
> E.g., to talk about three children, you'd talk about a "child-three"
> (child being adjectival). To talk about five dogs, you'd refer to a
> "canine-five". The idea being that the number manifests itself in
> different shapes and forms, rather than vice versa. So you'd talk about a
> monetary-thousand rather than a thousand units of currency, a floral-ten
> rather than ten flowers, and reddish-nine instead of nine (types of) reds.
>
> What do people think of this idea? Good? Bad? Crazy? Stupid? :-)
Stupid not at all, crazy perhaps, good I think so. The idea seems to fit well
in what I have seen from Ebisedian.

Ebisedian doesn't have real adjectives, right? From what I have seen, they are
actually nouns that modify other nouns. As a result, you have the possibily of
asking yourself the question: what modifies what? Depending on the context, a
"black horse" could then be expressed as "a horse being a black thing" or "a
black thing being a horse" (bad example, because I don't expect to find any
horses in the Ferochromon Universe)... Perhaps not even depending only on the
context, but also on the character/style/mood/taste of the speaker.

In the case of cardinal numbers, this seems even more natural. Nobody would be
surprised if the numbers were treated like adjectives. But in many cases it's
the number that is dominant and not the noun. If you say: "My CD player has
space for five CDs", it's obviously the number five that contains the crux of
the message. In Ebisedian, the sentence would probably look more or less like:
"player"-LOC (modified by "CD") modified by "my"
"space"-CVY modified by "five" (five being modified by "CD")

Correct me if I'm wrong; don't correct me if the Ebisedi don't have CD players
;)

On the other hand, in some situations it might be wise to do the reverse. In
the sentence "My neighbour has three parrots and a dog", the number three is
nothing more than a specification from the more important parrots. In that case
you might consider using the number as an adjectival noun.

Since I cannot imagine a universe without parrots, I'll assume that there must
be at least a few of them fluttering around above the Ebisedian landmasses :)))

Jan


=====
"Originality is the art of concealing your source." - Franklin P. Jones

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