§ 2. Indo-European numerals. First we would like to present a table which points the first ten Proto-Indo-European cardinal numerals in their reconstructed forms: Proto-Indo-European English *sems, *oi- one *duwo / *dwo two *treyes three *kwetwores four *penkwe five *sweks / *seks six *sept@m seven *októ eight *new@n nine *dek@mt ten Here @ + a consonant means the sonant vowel, and ó is a long vowel. These forms have varieties, but in principle all linguists agree that cardinal numerals must have sounded quite like this. Now let us look deeper at each of them and describe the system of the Indo-European numerals. The numeral "one" as you can see had in fact two different forms. But it looks as if it was an adjective in Early Proto-Indo-European, not exactly a numeral. This adjective practically was not used for counting - logically, what to count with one thing? That is why the meaning of this word in Proto-Indo-European, as well as in many ancient IE languages, was not "one". The word *sems meant "joint", "united" and was preserved in Latin semel (once) and in some other languages; the same stem is English same. The stem *oi- evidently meant "single", "the only", but could rarely exist just as it was, it usually added a suffix: thus, *oi-k-os existed in Indo-Iranian (Sanskrit eka, Kurdish yak), *oi-n-os was developed in most European languages (like Greek en, Latin unus), and some languages had the form derived from *oi-w-os (for instance, Avestan aeva). This was the matter of a dialect which existed within the Proto-Indo-European language community, but the stem was the same. There is a theory that the count started with "two" in Proto-Indo-European, and "one" was not considered a cardinal numeral. This is proven by the fact that the word for "one" is always declined as a simple adjective, though having only the singular forms. The origin of the stem *duwo which mutated into *dwo sometimes is unknown. But it is known that it was declined in dual number only (which is natural), and its feminine and neuter form was *duwoi / *dwoi. It is easy to trace the original sounding of this numeral, for even many nowadays languages did not go far from it: Russian dva, English two, etc. The next numeral is *treyes, feminine *trisres, neuter *tri. The last became the most widespread within the Indo-European family, though the original form with -s exists in Lithuanian trys, Romance languages (tres, trois) and existed in Classical Greek. For some reason I do not know this particularly numeral became the most stable among all the ten ones, and the form sounding somehow like tri exists practically in every Indo-European tongue. This cannot be said about *kwetwores, which was too complicated in comparison with *tri. But the structure of it can be recognized everywhere according to what the Indo-European *kw turns into in each language (Latin quattuor, but Oscan petir). Gamkrelidze and Ivanov in their book "Indo-European and Indo-Europeans" state that the count in the Proto-IE language was quaternary (in fours), not decimal (in tens), so the cycle ended in 4. The next one represented the next cycle: It was *penkwe which probably meant "5 fingers" on the hand. Compare the Slavic word pyad' meaning the hand, and pyat' meaning five. The word *penkwe and all numerals after it were not declined. The origin of *sweks (the dialectal form *seks) is again unknown, and the next one - *sept@m - is believed to have been borrowed from Semitic on a very early stage of the PIE language. It was present in all dialects, so at the moment it was borrowed the Proto-language was nor divided into dialects yet. Compare the Proto-Semitic *š-b-tu with the PIE form - here is another proof for the Asiatic homeland of Indo-Europeans. The word *októ is strange enough to be discussed for ages already by linguists. Scientists noticed that in fact this word is dual in number, so meaning two things. A version says it denoted two furrows made by the plough, another believes that is meant "two fours" so denoting the end of the second quaternary cycle. Maybe it was also borrowed from somewhere, but it was too far away to be sure. The second version is witnessed by the numeral *new@n, probably a cognate to the stem *newo- (see the analysis) meaning new - the new cycle after "eight" is a possible meaning. Or it is just a coincidence. And finally the word *dek@mt, with the possible meaning "two hands", if it is composed of *dwe + *k@mt (the latter meaning "a hand", cognate to Gothic handus). At first the majority of numerals were just nouns and behaved like nouns in the sentence. But later as many of them lost their declension, the usage also changed and a special part of speech appeared in the language. But still in all Indo-European tongues they remain nominal words, and the first four of them are declined, not with the full paradigm however.
#numbers #nummers #numéros #nanpa #luka_luka #sona_luka