Re: Types of numerals

On Mon, 02 Jan 2006, 22:15 CET, John Vertical wrote:

 > Hm, what I'm proposing might be a little hard to grasp
 > from the previous paragraph, so I'll construct an example
 > using English and base 2. So suppose the cardinal series
 > goes "one, two, onety-one..."; but meanwhile, the ordinal
 > series goes "first, second, firsty-first..." rather than
 > "...onety-first...". That is, NO ordinals would be derived
 > from the corresponding cardinals - but rather simpler
 > ordinals in a way similar, but perhaps not identical, to
 > how more complex cardinals are derived from simpler
 > cardinals.

So what you have are two (or more) independent counting
systems? E.g. one, two, three for the ordinals but aigh,
wir, dorn for the ordinals (making up random
English-sounding words)?

 > 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".

What about "fourth member of a quartet", "fifth member of a
quintet" etc. then? Would they have the same name?

 > ..And speaking of negative numbers, why doesn't -1 have a
 > name on its own, but i does?

I assume i = imaginary number? We haven't had that in Maths
yet, though, but I heard of it. Why should -1 have a name of
its own? Maybe like "one missing", "two missing", "three
missing" etc. and "first missing", "second missing", ... ?
Why then only -1? OK, you often use -1 and when forming
negative values, you actually multiply numbers with -1 but
don't write '-1·n' but only '-n' instead.

 > 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?

Sure, the "dozen", which is a unit of twelve. English also
has the "score", which also means 20 items. In German, a
"Zentner" is a weight of 50 kg, but you only use that word
with weights of sacks of concrete powder, potatoes, sand and
the like usually. "Zentner" is certainly derived from Lat.
'centum' = 100, but its value is 50 [fifty].

 > might add the golden and silver ratios (the latter is
 > sqrt(2)) to uwjge...

Uwjge is your conlang, isn't it?

 > So what other numerals are there? English has at least the
 > "group numerals" (single, duo, trio...), the "repeat
 > numerals" (once, twice, thrice...)

But English only has up to 'thrice' there AFAIK, I've never
seen 'fource' and 'fifce' etc. yet. Would only add to the
confusion between -teen and -ty since there's also -th and
-ce then :-)

That's my 2 ct for today,
Carsten

--
Keywords: numbers

"Miranayam cepauarà naranoaris."
(Calvin nay Hobbes)

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