Number 'nine' in Chiwere.

[Rankin, Robert L.]

> I’ve been poking around a bit about the number nine and so far I haven’t found anything to back up the possibility of “grerabri” being related to “grebrą.”  So I thought I’d try to see what Hocąk has for this.  Note that I have almost no experience with Hocąk so this is very iffy.  But I found something interesting (which may be old news to you guys :)).

I'm going to leave the Hochunk numerals to the Hochunk specialists, although I suspect your "one-not" analysis in terms of finger counting is correct.

GrerabriN '8's not related to grebrą '10'.  It's related to rabriN '3'.  'Seven' should be grenoNba, or something close to that, if memory serves.  Systems in which 6 through 10 contain the numbers 1 though 5 are called quinary (or five-base) counting systems.  In Dhegiha and Chiwere systems the words for 'seven' and 'eight' usually contain the words for 'two' and 'three' respectively, with a prefix.  The prefix is ppe:- in Dhegiha and gre:- in Chiwere.  Both prefixes have long vowels.  So Dhegiha and Chiwere systems are partial quinary counting systems.  This leaves 'nine' odd-man-out, and various Siouan languages deal with it in different ways, as we've seen.

Bob

I’ve been going through Maximilian and Long’s Otoe language lists lately and thought I’d look there for some Hocąk numbers to see if my idea can be backed up there.  Here is what Long has for nine:

jhink-ich-os-co-ne

Nothing at all like “sanke.”  So based on what’s being said here, I decided to look at what he has for one:

jhing-ke-de

Looks to me like “one” is definitely part of “nine” here.  I’m not sure what “(i)ch-o” is doing in there but the “s-co-ne” sure looks like “skunyi” (not) to me.  So I’m wondering if this is “one – not – (doing whatever)”.  An EXTREMELY tentative thought I am having right now is maybe the (i)ch-o might be something along the lines of “ah-kutch-ah” which Henry Merrell has as “the other side” (that was his spelling as well).  If so, that would be “one – not – the other side” which perhaps might refer to the idea of holding one finger down on one hand.  But like I said, that is EXTREMELY tentative.

So I thought, “Ooh!  Maybe eight follows suit!”  But I was stopped cold with eight being:

no-wunk

I have absolute no idea what is going on there.  It is nothing like “grerabri.”  I can see how the rest of the numbers match Otoe-Missouria (with the obligatory shifts and differences, of course) but not eight (or nine).  So now I am wondering if Hocąk kept the original form of nine but picked up their eight from somewhere else.

Has anyone else seen or worked with this form of eight before?  Are there any theories as to its origins?


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