Teens and Twenties

[Harald Hammarström]

>>  As far as I know 1,2,3,4,5,6,many systems don't exist. There's an
>
> We're talking about different things, I think. I probably shouldn't
> have used the term  "systems of numeration". I was talking about
> apparent quantity thresholds underlying numeration as reflected in
> the etymology of words for numbers.

If that's what you mean there are languages which represent any
threshold between 1-10 (ask me for examples) with no special
frequency of 6 or 7 as the threshold.

> Thus, the Russian words for '2' till '6' reflect established IE
> protoforms, but then come _sjemh "7', vosjemh '8'.

They too represent pIE protoforms see e.g.
@PhdThesis{numbers:LujanMartinez:PhD,
   author =   {Eugenio Ram\'on {Luj\'an Mart\'inez}},
   title =    {Los Numerales Indoeuropeos},
   school =   {Universidad de Complutense, Madrid},
   year =     {1996}
}

>>  I don't know what you mean by quadragesimal system but there is always
>
> Latin _quadraginta_ '40', _quadragesimus_ '40th', by analogy to
> _viginti_ '20', _vigesimus_ '20th', from whence "vigesimal".

I phrased it badly. It's clear that quadragesimal pertains to 40 but
you used quadragesimal to describe Russian which has an idiosyncratic
form for 40. Usually quadragesimal and vigesimal are used to mean
that higher numbers are formed from 40 and 20 respectively, using
additions and multiplications. This is different from the Russian
situation and the questions of examples in AN you posed thus get a
different meaning.

H

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