Re: Sound changes causing divergence of ordinals from cardinals

staving John Vertical:

 >Neat stuff. Still, this does nothing to extend the cardinal/ordinal
 >distinction to other numerals! They'll definitely get messed up too in all
 >these sound shifts, but it would be unlikely that one series would turn out
 >resembling the ordinals more than the cardinals, let alone contrasting the
 >two as equally possible roots.


 >OK, with lots of adjacent vowels now...
 >(4) Sequences of adjacent vowels with the same roundedbackness develop into
 >long vowels. Schwa matches with all series. The vowel is high (or low) iff
 >all the originals vowels also are, else mid.

 >And to stop this from being just "big" shifts, I think we should also allow
 >one "small" (ie. affecting only a few of the words herein) sound shift per
 >turn:
 >(4.5) Immediately before stress, /tS dZ/ lenite to /S Z/ unless preceded by
 >an alveolar continuant.

(5) Final e is lost, and final e: is shortened.

Value Cardinal        Ordinal
1     'j@wQ           i'we
2     'nero           na'ru
3     'mjo:           mi'u
4     'to:            'to:
5     'kin            'kink
6     'jesu           ja'swe
7     'Sj@gu          Si'gwe
8     'dZuz2          Zo'ze
9     'hj@ja          hi'je
10    'neo            na'u
11    'hero           ha'ru
12    'utsu           ot'swe
20    naro'no:        naro'no:
21    naronQ'H@wQ     naronQy'we
22    narono:'noro    narono:nQ'ru
30    mio'no:         mionQ'u
31    naro'no:ro    narono:'ru
32    naro'no:tsu     narono:'tswe
33    miono:'mjo:    miono:mi'u

 >I also postulate words for 100, 1000 and 10000:
100 'tSifu Se'pwe (from tSepu tSepuke)
1000 'wegor wa'gurk (from wagor wagorke)
10000 Sun'tSyfu tSuntS2'pw@k (from tSuntSepu tSuntSepuke )

We seem to have achieved complete irregularity of the ordinals by now, but
they're still recognisable cognates of the cardinals. I do quite like the
fact that two ordinals have become indistinguishable from their cardinals.

Pete

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