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sixths

From:Anton Sherwood <bronto@...>
Date:Thursday, December 13, 2001, 5:44
> >>> (Somehow, the more extreme examples in English phonology -- "two > >>> sixths [t_hu: sIksTs]" -- never seem to come up in these discussions.)
Andrew Chaney wrote:
> Of course if I were really going to say "two sixths", > I'd probably say it "one third". But that's just me.
They could be ordinal sixths. Latin, incidentally, has names for all the fractions n/12: 1 u:ncia 2 sextant- 3 quadrant- 4 trient- 5 qui:ncu:nc- (< quinque unciae) 6 se:miss- 7 septu:nc- 8 be:ss- (< duess-) 9 dodrant- 10 dextant- 11 deu:nc- (all are third declension, i.e. consonant-stem, except <u:ncia>) I'm tempted to make cardinals, ordinals and reciprocals independent of each other; if I'm feeling really wicked that day they'll be on different bases. -- Anton Sherwood -- http://www.ogre.nu/