Number etymologies

[Pabappa]

These are the bits that make up the numbers of Tapilula, the parent language of nearly all of my conlangs. I have languages mapped as far out as 8,700 years from the date of Tapilula, so not all of the descendant languages maintain these roots, but the basics are still there.

The grave accent indicates a high tone ... sounds perverse, I know, but I use it because in most environments it is followed by a glottal stop, thus "cut off" at the end the way a grave accent looks to me. The breve accent indicates a medium tone. Any unmarked vowel is unstressed and thus invariant for tone.

hìga two; plural; to count
mà plus one; primordial /mat/
hə̀ four
ògi to feel
tàpə almost (historically tà + àpə)
hʷò to hide
ə̀ku couple
ə̆nu to point
tʷŏno to point
àpə one; object; simple

Most of these roots are not standalone numerics. The Tapilula numbers from one to ten are formed by piecing them together, as follows:

1) àpə, matàpə (mà + àpə, not mà + tàpə).
Literal meaning of the first is simply "one"; literal meaning of the second is "plus one, of one".

2) hìga, ənupìga.
Literal meaning of the first is "counting"; of the second, "pointing of counting", showing retention of an otherwise lost primordial /k/ which shifted to /p/ due to the preceding /u/.

3) mahìga. Possibly matìga due to analogy with the retained -t- on the numbers for one and six, as if /th/ > /t/. Otherwise, /th/ > /h/ is correct because the phoneme that became /h/ was itself a stop at the time of the original compound.
Literal meaning is "plus one, of counting"; that is, two plus one.

4) həgìga or həgìha; I dont remember the reason behind the anomalous use of /h/ in the second form because I didnt write it down.
Literal meaning is "four of counting".

5) ə̀gi. No variation on this one, though some daughter languages show reflexes of /ògi/ instead due to the longstanding vowel harmony involving /e~ə~o/ and the fact that /o/ is the most dominant in harmony processes.
Literal meaning is "feeling"; that is, one hand, or five fingers.

6) matə̀gi. This is a compound of /mà/ + /ə̀gi/, with the linking /-t-/ retained from a much older stage of the language.
Literal meaning is "plus one, of feeling"; that is, five plus one.

7) tʷononògi or tʷonògi. This is a compound of /tʷŏno/ + /ə̀gi/, with the schwa changing to /o/ because of vowel harmony rules. The proper form is the longer one, but the shorter form arose through reanalysis after the linking /-n-/ was lost from the first morpheme.
Literal meaning is "pointing of feeling"; that is, the index finger on the second hand, which is the seventh finger.

8) hə̀ku This word had no variation at the proto-language stage, but was often lost in daughter languages.
Literal meaning is "four, of a couple"; that is, two times four.

9) tàpə or hʷotàpə or tapə̀ku or əkutʷòpo.
The first form here just means "almost" and assumes loss of the head of the phrase. The second phrase implies "ten, almost". The third phrase implies "almost of ten". The last phrase is again "ten, almost" and uses a very old rule Im not sure Im going to keep .... that any consonant after a primordial /ū/ (which contracts to /u/) becomes labialized. This labialization then causes /a/ > /o/, which in turn causes /ə/ > /o/. I really like this, but I might not go quite that far.

10) hʷòku. No variation here, but this word merges with the word for eight in many daughter languages, and in most cases the word for ten predominated.
Literal meaning is "hiding, of a couple", that is, two fistfuls.

_____________________

None of this is based on anything I've seen in any natlang ... I made it all up myself. So it may or may not be a good base to work from if youre just starting out designing a primordial number system. I'm interested to see other people's work and in particular the ideas behind the etymologies of numbers that are just beginning to come into use.

[Pedant]

Looking pretty darn good to me!

[Man in Space]

I like this.

I hope you don’t mind my asking: Is this a thread to post our own number etymologies as well or was this meant for your work specifically?

[Pabappa]

Yes, for everyone. I want to see other ideas.... if someone is truly stuck this thread might be very useful to them.

We had a thread a few years ago that involved this, though I suspect it was one of the very long general-purpose threads because we couldnt find it in the database when we looked earlier. So I decided to start a new thread just for numerals.
________________
In the old thread, I remember not being satisfied with my etymologies for four and seven, .... here, I basically kicked the problem back to the pre-proto-language by making an atomic root for four even 8,700 years ago. My words for two and seven are semantically identical, but this doesnt bother me any more, as Im going to say that they were coined several thousand years apart, and the speakers would only have noticed the similarity of the second morphemes, which only mean "counting" and also appear on other numerals anyway.

This is a base-10 culture, because the root word for nine implies subtraction from ten. I could have used this strategy to make a numeral for seven as well, but I like the idea of the people counting on their hands and so I decided it makes more sense to make seven a "positive" formula (five plus two) rather than using subtraction.

Also, I currently have a word that means to clap one's hands serving as my "multiply by ten" morpheme, but I might restrict its use to just one family. Unlike the other morphemes above, this one doesn't merge with other morphemes to make opaque roots, so it would change or disappear as each language evolves in both diachronics and grammar.

[masako]

The etymologies for Kala numbers are pretty lame compared to this. I just stole the number roots from natlangs. But, people might think otherwise looking here, so I'll explain.

0 ye'o - taken from Korean 영

1 na'o - taken from Sanskrit एन (éna)

2 ta'o - taken from Cherokee ᏔᎵ

3 ha'o - taken from Hungarian három

4 ma'o - taken from Tahitian māha

5 ya'o - from yato (hand) taken from Arabic يد

6 tsa'o - taken from Arabic ست

7 ka'o - taken from Quechua qanchis

8 pa'o - taken from Mandarin 八

9 sa'o - taken from Arabic تسعة

[Arzena]

The numbers 1-10 in Yanarit, the proto-language of my primary conlangs are reconstructed as follows:

Nominals 1 through 4 are unanalyzable lexemes; uncertainty exists in the reconstruction of 4, whose three common reconstructions are provided:
1. wud-
2. ʕam-
3. dˤrigˤ-
4. ɣigˤ-, ɣik-, ɣiɣ-
5. ɣe.sm̞ or ɣesə̃; the first analyzable number: *ɣesə̃ 'fist'

Nominals 6 through 9 are composed on the previous five:

6. ɣesə̃wud 'five (and) one'
7. ɣesə̃ʕam 'five (and) two'
8. ɣigˤam- 'lit. four-two', ɣikab- 'four-DUAL', ɣiɣɣiɣ- 'four-four'
9.wud-ʕut’-dˤusa 'one (cut) from ten'

The nominal 10 exists as an independent lexeme.
10. dˤusa-

[mackths]

Some languages around New Guinea don't even have a base for their number system and just count (or at least used to) based off of their body parts (e.g. the words for 1-5 are just the names of their fingers, 6 is wrist, 7 forearm, etc.) The conlang I'm working on now starts as a system like that (since I can't really think of a situation in a hunter gatherer society where people would need specific numbers past 15 or so) and evolves into one with an actual base system as the people who spoke the language adopt agriculture and need to count in large quantities for trading. As for numbers like 100 or 1000, I figure it isn't that out there to just use a word meaning "a lot" or an augmentative form of "ten".
Edit: Grammar

[xxx]

Well, I, too, use numbers based on finger names...
but maybe it's the other way around...

[Vardelm]

Janko needs to think about gathering the etymologies for his numbers collection in addition to just the numbers themselves.

[JANKO GORENC]

Janko needs to think about gathering the etymologies for his numbers collection in addition to just the numbers themselves.

https://www.astronumero.org/numerology-charts.html

[Vardelm]

https://www.astronumero.org/numerology-charts.html

And apparently he's already doing some extra work for the project.

Have fun, Janko!

[JANKO GORENC]

https://www.astronumero.org/numerology-charts.html

And apparently he's already doing some extra work for the project.

Have fun, Janko!

I'm currently lecturing at various institutions (for now only in Slovenia) Research and Description of Languages ​​through History and Today. First part: description of languages ​​(speaking and writing), second part: Description of numbers (history, today) and third part: description of my work.

Of course, I still collect numbers. Today I have collection over than 50,000 ways. However, I must say that I have written 43,000 in my collection so far, the rest I still have all in the files on my computer and for backup on USB.

[Vardelm]

I'm currently lecturing at various institutions (for now only in Slovenia) Research and Description of Languages ​​through History and Today. First part: description of languages ​​(speaking and writing), second part: Description of numbers (history, today) and third part: description of my work.

Of course, I still collect numbers. Today I have collection over than 50,000 ways. However, I must say that I have written 43,000 in my collection so far, the rest I still have all in the files on my computer and for backup on USB.

Nice! I look forward to having some numbers to add to your collection.

[Man in Space]

Proto-Tim Ar-O only had atomic numerals up to three:
*tion 'one'
*t̪aga 'two'
*idʲieʔʁo 'three'

On the way to Classical Ĝate n Tim Ar, these became:
ðún 'one' < PTO *tion
háka 'two' < PTO *t̪aga
isë 'three' < PTO *idʲieʔʁo 'three'

But CT developed ways to count higher:
höhsë 'four' < PTO *twɛ-idʲieʔʁo 'brother-three'
ðúnki 'five' < PTO *tion-giʔ 'one hand'
kihê 'six' < PTO *giʔ-ʁiʔo 'hand-thumb'
kórö 'seven' < PTO *kawɹɔ 'face' + the *e-infix (the idea being the face has seven openings—two eyes, two nostrils, two ears, one mouth)
rarê 'eight' < PTO *rar-ʁeʔo 'without-thumb' (i.e. two hands' worth of digits minus the thumbs)
êʕê 'nine' < PTO *ʔeʁol-ʁeʔo 'with-thumb' (i.e. eight, but with one of the thumbs)
arik 'ten' < PTO *aɹ-giʔ 'hands' (this is a fossilized older plural reanalyzed as a singular…in CT plurals ended up forming due to metathesis caused by the original pluralizing particle *aɹ slamming onto the noun after becoming a function word and losing stress)

For the teen numbers, CT used constructions derived from the term nég 'son' (< PTO *neheʁʔ); the forms look somewhat irregular due to varying degrees of analogy and three-consonant clusters ruining everything:
néðún 'eleven'
néháka 'twelve'
néhsë 'thirteen'
néhöhsë 'fourteen'
néðúnki 'fifteen'
nékihê 'sixteen'
nékórö 'seventeen'
nérarê 'eighteen'
néʕê 'nineteen'
néarik 'twenty'

There were actually two words developed for twenty: néarik 'son of ten' and höarik 'brother of ten'. Which term won out in a specific locale varies; the descendant languages usually use terms derived from one or the other, but not both.

The numbers from thirty to eighty are pretty transparent, for the most part, though cluster resolution and analogy made them look slightly different than expected:
arihkisë 'thirty'
arihköhsë 'forty'
arihkúnki 'fifty'
arihkihê 'sixty'
arihkórö 'seventy'
aritsarê 'eighty' (*-hkr- > *-hts- > *-ts- is actually a regular change here)
téngo nihít 'ninety' (lit. 'short hundred', 'weak hundred', 'pitiful hundred')

One hundred is téngo (not sure of the etymology of this one yet, but the word is there). One hundred ten is téngo kahál 'strong hundred'.

[HazelFiver]

Sparrowgrass hex numbers aren't related to anything, except for A-F (10-15) which used to all begin with those letters. Not very creative. I've made some changes since then, but we still have deu, eix, fjos for 13, 14 and 15. With the decimal numbers, on the other hand, we have the obvious borrowings dék "ten", kan "hundred" and míl "thousand".

If I start working on a naturalistic language again, I'll consider doing something more complicated and diachronic here.