Re: Questions about Hungarian

On Sun, 2 May 2004 19:23:41 -0400, John Cowan <cowan@...> wrote:

>Finnish is interesting here:  8 and 9 are "two less than *deksan*"
>and "one less than *deksan*", but "deksan" (which is obviously IE)
>is not the Finnish for 10.
Hmm.  "One" and "two" are yksi and kaksi, respectively.  They alternate
with yhdeksän and kahdeksan for "eight" and "nine."  I've been told that
yksi and kaksi are from earlier *ükti and *kakti.  The sequence /kti/, in a
final open syllable, becomes /ksi/, but in a closed syllable becomes /hde-/
(kt becomes ht (ti > si came later), then consonant gradation leads to hd,
and i in a closed syllable becomes e).  So, yhdeksän and kahdeksan are
really ükti-ksAn and kakti-ksAn.  So the question is, what does the -ksAn
ending mean?  Is it monomorphemic or a compound?

- Rob