Re: Historical Sound Change & Numbers Puzzle
| From: | Joseph Fatula <joefatula@...> |
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| Date: | Sunday, March 11, 2007, 8:42 |
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Eugene Oh wrote:
> How many roots did you actually come up with to get "cnew" for 987?
> I'm not that mathematically inclined myself haha.
>
> Eugene
I suppose I might as well give you the whole list. This is in the
original language, before any sound changes.
1 - ba
2 - ru
3 - wec
5 - say
8 - ngel
13 - cef
21 - bor
34 - mål
55 - con
89 - yuc
144 - may
233 - vel
377 - csur
610 - ång
987 - cnew
1597 - tes
Not all of them made it to the descendant language, which, as you've
seen, is 10-based instead.
The real work wasn't in making these numbers, it was in fiddling with
dozens of ideas for number systems. This one isn't the first one I
tried. It departs from human languages in two ways. First, that there
is no base to the roots, no number that can be raised to a power to make
the next level (like how our system has ones, tens, hundreds, etc.,
powers of ten). Second, that there is no multiplication. Most systems
have something like "two" + "hundred" to mean 2 x 100. This one is
entirely additive, "two" "hundred" would mean 2 + 100. The nice thing
about using the Fibonacci series for the morphemes is that an entirely
additive system is possible without a "tally mark" effect. If you used
our ten-based system in an entirely additive way, you'd have
"tententenfour" for 34. With the Fibonacci series, you never need more
than one of a single morpheme to add up to a number.
Joe
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