Re: Types of numerals

staving John Vertical:
>Carsten Becker wrote:
>>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)?
>
>Well, sort of. I suppose the two systems could even do some interbleeding,
>or maybe even be both derived from a common source - the main point would
>be having the cardinals and ordinals on an equal tier when it comes to
>derivational morphology.
>A case-stacking system where every noun requires to be marked for
>nom/acc/dat (or erg/abs/etc if you prefer) but can still be inflected for
>other, less syntactic cases, would be analogous.
One way to make up an ordinal series that looks very different from the
cardinal series.

Make up your cardinals in a proto-language.
Create your ordinals for the proto-language with a regular derivational
process.
Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of sound change.

Let's try it. Somebody give us a list of cardinals and an ordinal affix,
and we'll take turns in proposing sound changes until there's no regular
way of deriving one from the other.

Pete

Reply