Lakota Concept of Zero

[Rory M Larson]

> I was curious if anyone is aware of a Lakota term for the numeric concept
of "0" (zero). Most Lakota/English dictionaries I have read give numeric
terms beginning with "1" (one), and do not have "0" (zero) listed.

> While I know of the Lakota terms such as...

> wanji'ni = none
> takuni = nothing

> ...is this the same as "0" (zero)?

> Just wondering,
> Jonathan

Hi Jonathan,

I've checked Buechel, and Edward Starr's "Dictionary of Modern Lakota", and
neither one seems to have it.  Williamson gives a couple of 'zero' terms
for Dakota, though:

  osniocoka = ?? (couldn't find a back-translation)

  ta'kus^ni = 'nothing' (Riggs)

Zero is a pretty abstract mathematical concept.  I don't think we had it
either until it was invented in India and brought to Europe by the Arabs in
the Middle Ages.  If any of the native languages north of Mexico have it,
it would probably have been coined recently to match the Euro-American
term.

Even regular counting terms probably haven't been around too long.  The
fact that just about everybody seems to use a base-10 counting system shows
that it started out by matching fingers to quantity.  Finger names are
pretty volatile, and in a lot of obviously related languages the higher
counting terms don't agree.  I think across Siouan, the numbers 2, 3, 4,
and possibly 1, are cognate.  Within MVS, I believe 5, 6, and 10 are added.
7, 8, and 9 were apparently not standard counting numbers until perhaps a
few centuries ago, maybe about the time of proto-Dakotan.  Even Osage and
OP seem to differ on 8 and 9.

There are still languages today whose entire mathematical system consists
of 1, 2, and many.  I think most of these are in Australia, but at least
one language in the Amazon, PirahaN, is at about the same level.  Daniel
Everett, who has studied them for almost thirty years, claims that even
this is an exaggeration.  "1" is their word for 'small', "2" is their word
for 'large', and "many" is their word 'cause to come together', used for
anything composed of discrete elements.  In fact, he claims, their language
is so devoid of countable quantification that they do not even have terms
for 'all', 'many', 'most', 'few', 'each', or 'every'!

It looks like counting terms and mathematics have been developing in crude
parallel all over the world in the last ten thousand years or so along with
the shift to settled dwelling, agriculture, private property, trade, and
administration.  Our foraging ancestors, however, apparently did not need
arithmetic.  Native North Americans were foragers much more recently than
Europeans were, and the mathematical component of their languages will
likely reflect this.

Best,
Rory