Re: Dichotomies, trichotomies, polychotomies

At 3:30 pm -0400 24/5/02, H. S. Teoh wrote:
>On Fri, May 24, 2002 at 07:57:37PM +0100, And Rosta wrote:
>> H. S. Teoh
>> > Quick terminological question here:
>> >
>> > I'm working on correlatives in my conlang ATM, and so far there are
>> > dichotomies and trichotomies. I'm thinking about having a 5-prong 'chotomy
>> > as well. What would the right term be? Pentachotomy? Pentchotomy?
>> > Quintichotomy? None of them sound "right".
>>
>> dichotomy, tritomy, tetratomy/tesseratomy, pentatomy -- stress is
>> penTAtomy.
>[snip]
>
>Hmm, is it tritomy or trichotomy?
It is _trichotomy_ in fact, as a look in any decent dictionary will show.
Both it and _dichotomy_ are from Greek, thus:

dichotomy <-- dikhotomia "to division into two parts" <-- dikha [adverb]
"in two, assunder, in two parts" + tome: [n] "cutting, division"

trichotomy <-- trikhotomia "division into 3 parts" <-- trikha [adverb] "in
three parts, three ways" + tome: [n] "cutting, division"

Prsumably one would logically continue to use the Greek adverbs for "in _n_
parts", thus:
tetrakha - into 4 parts
pentakha - into 5 parts
heksaka - into 6 parts
heptakha - into 7 parts
oktakho:s - into 8 parts
enneakho:s - into 9 parts
dekakha - into 10 parts, 10 ways
pollake:i/ pollakho:s - into many parts, into many ways.

Thus _pentachotomy_ (<-- *pentakhotomia "division into 5 parts") is surely
what you want.

>But anyway, pentatomy (penTAtomy :-)) sounds cool to me. I think I'll
>adopt that.
..except that _pentatomic_ does exist and means "having 5 atoms".  Surely
'pentatomy' must mean "the state of possesing 5 atoms"?  Tho there was an
ancient Greek word 'pentatomon' = "cinquefoil [plant], Pontentilla"

Ray.


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Speech is _poiesis_ and human linguistic articulation
is centrally creative.
                                 GEORGE STEINER.
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