Re: Types of numerals

John Vertical wrote:

> I've been thinking about numerals lately.... >
> .:DEFINITIONS:.
>
> First off, I confess that I not sure if you'll recognize "numeral" as a
> word
> for the class of "number words" (never seen it used in that way in
> English;
> only Finnish.)
I'm not totally sure what you're getting at here, but-- in Engl., I feel
that "numeral" refers mainly to the written form of the number, and it
sounds rather grade-school-ish at that:  "All right, children, write down
the numeral "five"...." in which case it's simply a synomyn for "number" but
with rather limited usage.  One does not hear, "There was a _numeral_ of
people at the party..."

I should mention that my knowledge of math (~theory) is quite limited.

> Does any
> language have ordinals as the unmarked series instead?
Don't know, but it seems somehow counter-intuitive.
>
> One could then split the class of numerals into "cardinal-derived" vs.
> "ordinal-derived" - maybe even contrasting other series purely by their
> roots. This is almost trivial to extend into mathematical series (half vs.
> halfth), but it might be possible to carry it over to grammatical series
> too
> - eg. contrasting the (cardinal-derived) word "trio" with an
> (ordinal-derived) word meaning maybe something along the lines of "third
> member of a trio".
IIRC Teoh's Ebisedi was obsessed with threes; I don't recall if it had such
a word, but I could see it happening.
>
>
> There are also often a handful of numbers which have an original name in
> addition to a derived one. Most of the ones I know have been used as units
> of measure (eg. Finnish "tiu" is a unit of 20 eggs), but are there others?
Perhaps these: Ml/Indonesian has a non-derived term for "-teen", belas;
almost all related langs. AFAIK use a combo of ten + unit.  Javanese,
uniquely AFAIK, has a special term for 20. All other decades, there and in
AFAIK all related langs., use Unit + ten.  A sub-family in Eastern Indo. has
special words for "10 ears of grain" and "10 pigs", unrelated to the word
for 10.  Fijian has: vola 'war canoe', vola-vola '100 war canoes', and
possibly others of that ilk. (ObConlang: Kash does not yet have such things,
but ought to....archaic, however; their analogues for dozen/gross refer to
quantities of ten/hundred resp.)

> Eg. is the Latin prefix sesqui- really a *root* morpheme? If yes, I could
> imagine lexicalizing other simple fractions too, like 2/3 and 3/4.
Don't know of any, but it's a neat idea.  Again, Malay/Indo. se/tengah
'half' derives from the word for 'middle' + a pfx. meaning 'one'.  Kash has
angunjo [aN'gundZo] derived from kunjo 'to divide'

> Also I might add the golden [ratio]....
The golden is 8:5, right? derived from the Fibonacci series? Kash has that--
moyot nakuweyu "Nakuweyu pattern" named after the Gwr version of Mr.
Fibonacci who first formalized the concept, also called moyot maci < Gwr maq
dzi "ten five [octal]". But only because I once read a book on Fibonacci and
got fascinated by the whole idea; the Greeks and all that;  also it's used
in some (rather far-out) stock-market analysis :-))

> and silver ratios (the latter is sqrt(2)) to uwjge...
Please explain more fully. WTF is "uwjge"???? (Is my math. ignorance
showing, or is that a typo of some sort..........:-)) )

Beyond that, the Kash have a word for "pi"-- onjiyur [on'dZijur] < om
'basis' + ciyur 'circle', called omi by mathematicians and symbolized with
the letter "m".  We also have words for the basic geometric figures (no
solids yet, however), basically "side + (number)".

Was this at all on-topic? :-)))

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