twoth

[Mark Mandel]

The Esp-o word needs no specific analogical etymology. There's a whole grid
of function words, generalizing from patterns like English
"here/there/where", "__/then/when", "__/that/what":

   - begin with 'ki' for relative or interrogative (definite I-E bias
   there), 'ti' for demonstrative, 'i' for indefinite, 'neni' for negative,
   'c^i' for universal (c-circumflex, [tS], English "ch")
   - add 'u' for individual, 'e' for place, 'a' for quality, 'om' for
   quantity, ... nine in all

So kiom 'how many/much', nenie 'nowhere', c^iu 'everyone, every one' (+/-
animate), tia 'that kind (of), such' and so on. And since you can
productively add the appropriate POS ending to any stem, kiom + the
adjective ending -a -> kioma 'how many-th'.

m a m

On Jan 24, 2008 9:47 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:

> At 9:28 AM -0500 1/24/08, Mark Mandel wrote:
> >How common is it in natural languages to have an ordinal interrogative
> word?
> >Esperanto has "kioma", derived by adjectivizing "kiom"  'how much/many"?
> >
> >m a m
>
> Presumably this arose by analogy with French and
> other Romance languages (the main source for
> Esperanto).  I note 106 google hits for
> _combienième_ with this meaning and derivation,
> as in
>
> Ca fait le combienieme sujet sur le genre?
>
> Mettons, que pour la j'sais pas combienième fois,
> j'ai utilisé le bouton "éditer ce message" au
> lieu de "répondre à ce message"
>
> c'est ton combienieme match?
>
> And the "less logical" but "more correct" form,
> _combientième_ (with epenthetic -t-) gets 2250
> hits (e.g. "Bill Clinton est le combientième
> président des États-Unis?" and an appearance in
> this blog on the topic:
> http://forum.wordreference.com/archive/index.php/t-418730.html
> (Respondents to this blog contribute
> interrogative ordinals in Swedish, German,
> Finnish, Turkish, Tagalog, etc.)
>
> LH
>
> >
> >On Jan 17, 2008 8:48 PM, Bill Le May <blemay0 at mchsi.com> wrote:
> >
> >>  > -----Original Message-----
> >>  > From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On
> Behalf
> >>  > Of Joel S. Berson
> >>  > Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2008 10:42 AM
> >>  > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> >>  > Subject: Re: twoth
> >>
> >>  > Thank heaven this is not likely to lead to oneth and thirdth.  (If I
> >>  > come across speakers of these, I won't stand too close.)
> >>
> >>  In childhood I remember saying "what-th". Wondering the day of the
> month,
> >>  I
> >>  would ask a parent "what day is it" and inevitably get an answer like
> >>  "Wednesday". Frustrated, I'd reply, "No, I mean today is that what-th
> of
> >>  January?"
> >>
> >>  No virus found in this outgoing message.
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> 1/17/2008
> >>  11:12 AM
> >>
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