Teens and Twenties

[David Gil]

Concerning Waruno's Javanese forms with 'back', I would offer the 
following speculation.  If one assumes

(a) a vigesimal counting system, and
(b) a perspective in which counting proceeds forwards (16, 17, 18 ...) 
towards a fixed salient target of 20

then the "twenteens" are the numbers that are located *after* or 
*behind* said target of 20.



Waruno Mahdi wrote:

> Javanese has _likur_ to form the "twenteens" (i.e. the numerals from 21
> till 29), e.g. _se-likur_ '21', _ro-likur_ '22', _telu-likur_ '23', etc.
> The usage is already attested in Old Javanese. It has apparently been
> taken over from Javanese into the neighbouring Balinese and Madurese.
>
> The protoform is PAN *likuD '(the) back', cf. Katatipol-Puyuma _rikuz-an_
> 'behind', Cebuano _likOd_ '(the) back' (O = o-acute), Ngaju _ba-rikor_
> 'on the back'.
> The popular (folk-etymological) explanation current among Javanese I 
> asked
> (long time ago) was that one counts the teens while holding the hands up
> front, and 21 till 29 with the hands held behind the back. I didn't find
> this particularly logical at that time (nor any more so now), but that's
> the explanation I always got when I asked.
> It is possible that the actual source was that the notion of a back here
> served to represent that of the body. But whether that really was so,
> your guess is as good as mine.
>
> Aloha,  Waruno
>
> _______________________________________________
> An-lang mailing list
> An-lang at anu.edu.au
> http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/an-lang
>
>
>

-- 
David Gil

Department of Linguistics
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany

Telephone: 49-341-3550321 
Fax: 49-341-3550119
Email: gil at eva.mpg.de
Webpage:  http://www.eva.mpg.de/~gil/



_______________________________________________
An-lang mailing list
An-lang at anu.edu.au
http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/an-lang