15.46, Qs: Numeral Typology; Lang Acquisition/German

Tue Jan 13 18:46:39 UTC 2004

LINGUIST List:  Vol-15-46. Tue Jan 13 2004. ISSN: 1068-4875.

Subject: 15.46, Qs: Numeral Typology; Lang Acquisition/German

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1)
Date:  Sun, 11 Jan 2004 07:35:01 -0500 (EST)
From:  Thomas Hanke <thomashanke at email.de>
Subject:  Discontinous Numerals

2)
Date:  Mon, 12 Jan 2004 16:34:37 +0100
From:  Sonja Boes <boes at mail.idf.uni-heidelberg.de>
Subject:  Turkish, Russian, Arabic, English, German language acquisition

-------------------------------- Message 1 -------------------------------

Date:  Sun, 11 Jan 2004 07:35:01 -0500 (EST)
From:  Thomas Hanke <thomashanke at email.de>
Subject:  Discontinous Numerals

Hello!

I'm collecting data for a (small) typology of numerals.

One interesting case seems to be quite common in Classical (Biblical)
Welsh, still existent in the modern language: there is a flexible
constituent ordering inside of cardinals, that is only restricted in a
small-to-large sequence. The specialty is the movement of the noun
together with the smallest, often concording constituent. So there are
(roughly translated): ''twenty and two men'', ''two on twenty men''
and ''two men on twenty''.

Germanic languages have had at least similar constructions: ''two men
and twenty'' - such a phrase is still understandable in English and
German, but surely extremely archaic - even more than ''two and twenty
men'' in English.

Last Wednesday, I found another example by pure chance in a grammar of
Nootka , where an example sentence for word-classes contained the part
''10-animals and-5 '' split, with the ''and-5'' dislocated to the end
of the sentence. It looks like the ''10-animals'' is incorporated in
the verbal complex - even more fascinating!  In Welsh, *''ten animals
and five'' isn't possible, as far as I know.  The two examples
contrast massively in the degree of discontinuity: Welsh just reorders
the numeral and always keeps the connection of smallest cardinal and
noun.

There are typological considerations of the small first vs. large
first ordering of numerals, but I haven't been able to find
typological work on discontinous numerals, besides the work on
Indo-European languages.

I would be glad to receive information on these and other languages
with discontinous numerals. It would be fine to get details about the
types of numerals involved (cardinal, ordinal, ...), the word-class
and gender/noun class/classifier concord of the numeral and its parts.

An imagined case is a noun class/classifier system, which has numeral
concord to the noun and different class concord triggered by large
bases - a quite common case in gender systems because of the
'nouniness' of large bases.  ''one-F million(F) and one-M soldier(M)''
is normal in Germanic and Romance languages.

Any reference will be helpful. A cue to contrastive work done would be perfect!

Of course, I will submit a summary of the gained data to LinguistList.

Thank you for your interest,
Thomas Hanke

-------------------------------- Message 2 -------------------------------

Date:  Mon, 12 Jan 2004 16:34:37 +0100
From:  Sonja Boes <boes at mail.idf.uni-heidelberg.de>
Subject:  Turkish, Russian, Arabic, English, German language acquisition

Dear all,

I'd be grateful for pointers to published (or other) material on child
language acquisition of phonetic and/or phonological aspects of the
following languages: Turkish, Russian, Arabic, English, or German

I need the information for a study of German as a second language by
young children (aged 3 years) with Turkish, Russian, Arabic or English
as their mother tongue. Focus of the study are phonetic and phonological
aspects (syllable structure, prosody, phonotactics).

Not much material seems to have been done in this area. However, I'm
anxious not to try reinventing the wheel, so any suggested references or
other information will be gratefully received.

Thanks in advance,
Sonja Boes

Sonja Boes
Institut fuer Deutsch als Fremdsprachenphilologie
Ruprecht-Karls-Universitaet Heidelberg
Ploeck 55, 69117 Heidelberg
E-Mail: boes at mail.idf.uni-heidelberg.de

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