Talk:Proto-Indo-European numerals

Six and seven
The PIE numerals for six and seven look like Semitic loans, in view of similarities. --Paul from Michigan 21:14, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

90 in Russian is listed as "devjatnadsat". I'm not qualified to suggest a change but I can make the comment that I learned 90 as "devjatnasto", if I might attempt to use this phoenetic representation. Digitalsushi 23:53, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Listed Russian forms are not 20-90 but 12-19. And of course, 90 is not "devjatnadsat" but "devjanosto". I will fix it, and remove 40 (Russian "sorok"), because it has different etymology. A.M.D.F.


 * Probably was a reference to Nadsat... AnonMoos (talk) 09:57, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Can we not add German zweite to the list on Ordinal numbers? Under Grimm's Law the initial d should become t and then by the High German consonant shift the t should become z thus zweite should be cognate with dwo-teró-? This goes for dritte and the next one as Grimm's Law and High German shift would once again lead you close to the actually word. Thoughts? Deman7001 01:16, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
 * German zweite is a relatively recent coinage; the Proto-Germanic word for "second" is the ancestor of German andere/English other. —Angr 16:09, 25 May 2007 (UTC)


 * "Zweite" is analogous to English "twoth" (one of my old high school Chemistry teacher's favorite words). AnonMoos (talk) 09:57, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Nine and new?...
Is the PIE word for 9 the same as the word for "new?" They seem to be similar words in many IE languages. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.109.210.129 (talk) 09:57, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Not really, PIE cardinal 9 is *(h₁)néwn̥, while adjective for new is *néwos (*néwios). --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 19:29, 14 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Do really, in Proto-Indo-Iranian a '9' is navam and a 'new' is navas, the number 9 was a new number after 8, so it was called 'a new' i.e navam.

Proto-Indo-Iranian (and Proto-Balto-Slavic too) numerals are (in Baltic transcription): aikas/aitas/ainas, duvā, trajas, kjatvāras, puankjam, suaksjam, suaptam, akstam, navam, daksam. Roberts7 14:02, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Maybe, maybe not. Any connection between "nine" (as in Latin novem) and "new" (as in Latin novus) is possibly as much a coincidence as the Latin words (in accusative singular) for mouse (murem) and wall (murum). Coincidence must be assumed when cause is not obvious. The numeral-names in PIE seem not to have obvious derivations except perhaps for "five" (related in English to "finger" and "fist", probably more primitive concepts than "five").

Obvious derivations for number-names three, four, six, seven, and eight don't exist in Pokorny or elsewhere from sources more "primitive" than the numbers themselves. --Paul from Michigan (talk) 11:22, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Reflexes: Citations needed
I cross-checked the reflexes against Fortson 2004, referenced all that I found there and marked the others with Fact. Please add references and move them into the upper part of each table cell if you can. Note that your sources need to confirm that the words in question are actually reflexes of the PIE forms (i.e. derived from these via sound laws), it does not suffice if they merely have the same meaning. A number of reflexes could be deleted in my opinion (one example per branch would probably do), but I left them for the time being.

Preferred order to sort referenced reflexes into the list (to maintain some sort of system):
 * Anatolian – Indic – Iranian – Greek – Italic – Germanic – Celtic – Armenian – Tocharian – Baltic – Slavic – Albanian

Thank you --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 20:59, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Old Persian numerals
From reading the Gvozdanovic book and looking at the various article in the Encyclopedia Iranica, it seems one could reconstruct forms *çayah (*çaiiah) for three, *čaθwārah for four, and *xšaš for six.

Check this table of sound correspondences:

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/kurdish-language-i (see Table 2)

Statement on the origins of Persian se found here:

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/dimli


 * çaiiah which one can also transcribe as *çayah. Azalea pomp (talk) 18:05, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

font sizes
I can't read the PIE words on this page. I can't see why the font size is so small. Can one of the Wiki-gnomes explain/fix this. mahaabaala (talk) 15:01, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
 * It doesn't look small to me. It must be the way your browser is interpreting the PIE template, which applies the following formatting to the text:  . It's probably the class="Unicode" that's affecting things like font size. +Angr 15:15, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Semitic origins, "six" and "seven"?
Could the words for PIE numerals for "six" and "seven" be borrowings from Semitic languages? *sweks" looks much like Hebrew shisha (שִׁשָּׁה), and *septm looks much like Hebrew shiv'a (שִׁבְעַה) -- both in masculine forms. PIE speakers may have had occasional contact with Semitic speakers (certainly not the ancient Hebrews -- more likely Akkadians) in trade. Because several dialects of early PIE [Italic, Germanic, Celtic, and Hellenic] show no evidence of the palatal sibilant [ʃ] common in Semitic languages it may have gotten different treatments. No other correspondences between Semitic and PIE numerals from one to ten make any sense at all.Pbrower2a (talk) 14:49, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
 * It's very unlikely. For one thing, the oldest form of the PIE word for "six" is now usually reconstructed to be *weḱs rather than *sweḱs, and the similarity between the PIE word for "seven" and the Semitic word (some sibilant consonant + some vowel + some labial consonant + other stuff) isn't really compelling enough to be more than a coincidence. —Angr (talk) 08:40, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
 * But it would still be possible to cite people who have suggested this, of course. Or perhaps not borrowing but common (Nostratic) origin. --dab (𒁳) 22:07, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I just thought I would add that the Akkadian free form of seven, sebettum, seems remarkably close to PIE *sptm. Perhaps coincidence, perhaps a loan, perhaps a common origin. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2607:FEA8:8760:97C:D197:A2D3:E02E:EA70 (talk) 11:30, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

Numerals receive a chapter in Saul Levin's "Semitic and Indo-European vol. 1". There are multiple layers of borrowing between IE and (para-)Semitic languages. The earliest borrowings were probably directly into PIE, and these include the numerals: almost certainly from a finger-counting technique that spread with cattle-herding, quite likely via a para-Semitic or para-Afro-Asiatic language spoken by the "Early European Farmers" (a Neolithic population that came from the Levant via Anatolia). Later layers of borrowings likely reflect the co-existence of Greek, Anatolian, Phrygian, Indic, Armenian, Hebrew, Aramaean, and Egyptian-speaking kingdoms in the E. Med during the Bronze Age. — Additionally "six" is a one of 2-3 I-E numerals that is very hard to construct a single proto-form for (not only *weḱs and *sweḱs but *seḱs, *kseḱs, and some variants on *weḱs that make the initial labial vocalic have been put forward as the correct reconstruction from different reflexes in daughter languages), which is part of why the origin of PIE numerals is interesting. That the 2 best-attested candidates for direct Semitic cognates start immediately after five is what you would expect if you introduced a technique for counting in multiples of 10 into a language that previously only counted up to 5; but there are 3 or 4 other appropriate phonological correspondences that would imply two techniques using the same 10 reference-words to count to ten, but in 2 different orders —— Levin's project is to create a definitive list of possible morphological and lexical parallels between Semitic (and to a lesser extent Coptic, etc.) & I-E, plus the most common phonological patterns among them, so his collection of IE-Semitic numeral correspondences is maximalist and I wouldn't suggest it for WP, but please don't do the "I took 1 semester of linguistics and this must be a coincidence" thing. 173.48.76.154 (talk) 17:09, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * (Also: there is no discussion of etymology or links to other language families on this page at all. If it did discuss the PIE/Uralic cognates, then I would suggest also mentioning 6&7 as possible Afro-Asiatic cognates and mentioning the finger-counting theory so the reader can find more information elsewhere if desired. If there is no discussion of this kind, obviously no need to mention it, the cognates are indisputable or not.) 173.48.76.154 (talk) 17:16, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

Reflex
This is a weird word which is unusual and needs more explanation. Is it the same as 'cognate'? I found this definition: "A form or feature that reflects or represents an earlier, often reconstructed, form or feature having undergone phonetic or other change." That however doesn't quite seem to be the usage here. Please advise :) Malick78 (talk) 00:19, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It's not the same as cognate, it's the same as descendant, but the descendant of a reconstructed form. Thus one, oén, ūnus, and οἶνος are all reflexes of *Hoinos. That seems to be how the article is using the term. Angr (talk) 07:35, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * We don't seem to have an article on that concept. Reflex (linguistics) redirects to Sound change, which does not even mention the term. I've just changed the link in Reflex (disambiguation) from Sound change to Linguistic reconstruction; what about mentioning it there? Or is there a better place? --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 08:16, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the prompt help both of you :) Malick78 (talk) 09:29, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I think Linguistic reconstruction is the better place to define "reflex". Angr (talk) 14:02, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

From deictics/demonstratives?
Why is there no mention whatsoever of anything along these lines? In my opinion, the system of Indo-European numerals developed gradually into the historical period, with the original system consisting of only a few digits originating as deictics/demonstratives and a so-called “limit of counting,” i.e., one, two, three, many. I developed this latter notion in a series of articles beginning in 1984 (see, e.g., Shields 1984, 1991, 1994, 2000); the same view was more recently – and apparently independently – formulated by Carol Justus beginning in 1988 (see, e.g., Justus 1988, 1999, 2004).

The idea that, following common typological developments, the lower numerals of many languages have a deictic/demonstrative source is not new; indeed, both Conant (1896: 75) and Menninger (1969: 17) subscribe to this position. From Keneth Shields, "Hittite sia-‘1’ and its implications for the etymology of Indo-European numerals" in Indogermanische Forschungen, B. 115 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.64.75.61 (talk) 15:03, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Order of the reflexes in the table
The table of reflexes is good, but in my opinion it is a little bit messy. It would be better to order the reflexes based on their linguistic families rather than an alphabetical ordering. For example, the Anatolian reflexes should be grouped together, and the Indo-Iranian reflexes together, and Germanic reflexes together, etc.

For example, the reflexes of number five can be grouped this way:

--HD86 (talk) 12:51, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Albanian: Alb. pesë/pes(ë);pês
 * Anatolian: Luwian panta
 * Armenian: Arm. hing/hing/hink
 * Baltic: OPruss. pēnkjāi, Latv. pieci, Lith. penkì
 * Celtic: Gaul. pempe, Ir. cóic/cúig, Welsh pump
 * Germanic: ON fimm, Goth. fimf, Eng. fīf/five, Gm. fimf/fünf
 * Greek: Gk. πέντε pénte
 * Italic: Lat. quīnque, Osc. pompe, Umbr. pumpe
 * Indo-Iranian: Ved. pañca, Av. panca, Pers. panča/panj, Osset. fondz/fondz, Kashmiri pā.~tsh Kamviri puč
 * Slavic: OCS pętĭ, Pol. pięć, Russ. pjat'
 * Tocharian: Toch. päñ/piś
 * Sounds like a good idea. Go ahead if you like. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 16:48, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

No mention of eleven and twelve??
I feel that those numbers, and to a lesser extent, the teens, are worth at least mentioning... is the assumption that in PIE they followed the same formula as all of the other numbers from 1-99? So that, for example, in English they would be 'oneteen' and 'twoteen'? I was under the impression, though, that the names for 11 and 12 were unique in number of different languages, across multiple IE branches; it is even thought by some that at one time in the distant past our ancestors used a base-12 system.. It is known, for instance, that 'hundred' in English was originally 120; 100 was 'tenty' and 110 'eleventy'. 2600:1702:4960:1DE0:70B2:E44D:C94D:31E6 (talk) 02:26, 15 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't think that there's evidence for special names for "eleven" and "twelve" in PIE. Proto-Germanic has *ainalif and *twalif, but in Latin, Greek and Slavic they are formed regularly (undecim, héndeka, Serbo-Croatian jedanaest). Do you have a source for "hundred" being 120? That would be interesting to add. Best wishes, ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 08:51, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

I was wondering the same thing. Were the numbers named in base 10? If so, that would be a good thing to mention at the very least. 173.71.95.32 (talk) 00:54, 5 September 2022 (UTC)