Re: Historical Sound Change & Numbers Puzzle

On Mar 10, 2007, at 10:32 PM, Alex Fink wrote:
> 30 |bornel| = 21 + 8 + 1: |bor| could be 21, and |nel| is there,
> but no
> element for 1?  Probably just dropped when saying 29 this way fell
> out of
> currency.
I'd been wondering about this sort of thing - numerals composed of
several morphemes referring to different numbers, where the value of
the compound does not exactly equal the sum (or product, or whatever)
of the components. Does that happen in natlangs? For instance,
imagine a system which starts out using base 8, so 48 is rendered as
something like {six}{eight}; the system would eventually develop into
a decimal system, with the previous word for 48 being used for the
(close but not exact) 50.

I suppose the original numeral doesn't need to be composed of
multiple morphemes in that way; the discrepancy in meaning in that
case would be between the old meaning and the new.

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