No, 7 (was Re: ... No. 9)

[Koontz John E]

On Sun, 1 Dec 2002, Jack Martin wrote:
> Hope this helps.  I'm not sure why 'nine' would be borrowed.  As Haas and
> others have noticed, the word for 'seven' was borrowed from Creek into
> Cherokee, but seven is the special number for the Cherokee, so that sort of
> makes sense (four is the special number in the Muskogean languages).

Oddly enough a Siouan term for 'seven' was borrowed into Miami-Illinois.
And, actually, a fair number of numeral terms in Midwwestern languages
seem to be borrowed or innovated.  Indications of the former are usually
in the form of obvious similarities of form between otherwise unrelated or
only very distinatly related families, like the nine group.  But sometimes
forms within a particular family fail to obey sound laws in suspicious
ways.  For example, PS *raa'priN 'three' (cf. Dakota ya'mni(N)) is
da(a)'niN in Ioway-Otoe and daaniN' in Winnebago, but for 'eight' IO has
krera'briN in which -rabriN looks more like, say, Omaha-Ponca dha(a)'bdhiN
or Os dha(a)'briN 'three', or even Dakota ya'mni(N).  Maybe we just don't
understand the sound laws, but it sure looks like Ioway-Otoe 'eight'
borrows at least the 'three' part form some other Siouan language.

Indications of innovation are usually the occurrence of transparent
descriptions of hand signs, or additive or multiplicative terms, without
precedent elsewhere in the family, for example, the Osage 'nine' form
le(e)'braN=che wiN(iN)' dhiNke' 'lacking one of the ten' for 'nine' in
contast with Omaha-Ponca s^aN(aN)'kka 'nine' (attested everywhere else in
Dhegiha and in Ioway-Otoe), or Omaha-Ponca s^a(a)'ppe naN(aN)'ba 'two
sixes' for 'twelve' in contrast with more regular Kaw a(a)'liNnoNba
'sitting on it two' (the pattern for 'twelve' elsewhere in Dheigha, or for
teens in Dhegiha generally).

By the way, all those parenthetical vowels are places where I'm practicing
deducing the location of long vowels people haven't noted in the past.

Sometimes numbers are irregular with no particularly obvious reason for
it, for example, Da s^a'kpe, Dh *s^aa'ppe (or *s^aa'hpe), and IO saa'gwe
would be accounted for by PS s^aa'kpe, but Winnebago hakewe' (suggesting
*ha'kpe) doesn't fit, though it's obviously connected.

JEK