Companion Terms for 7 and 8 (Re: 'eight' some more)

[Michael Mccafferty]

On Sat, 8 May 2004, Koontz John E wrote:
>
> I think Bob pursued the matter further, though not necessarily in this
> direction.  As I recall it, his hypothesis is that the forms are not
> *s^aak 'hand' + numeral, but *s^aak 'hand' + description of gesture made
> with hand to indicate the numeral in question.  There are various hand
> counting systems that involve using only one hand, and after doing 1-5
> with fingers in some way making some differentiating gestures to handle
> 6-10.  I wish I knew of a survey of such systems - if one exists!
>
>>From another language family: the Uto-Aztecan language Nahuatl has a
vegisimal system, based on 20, which represents the counting of ten
fingers and *ten toes*. Unfortunately, I don't know how counting is
performed physically. However, the numbers go like this, in
translation:

one
two
three
four
it is a hand-grabbed thing
aside-one
aside-two
aside-three
aside-four
it is a hand torso
hand-torso one
hand-torso two
hand-torso three
hand-torso four
fifteen
fifteen one
fifteen two
fifteen three
fifteen four
it is one count



Michael