The history of numerals as a history of East African languages
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Maarten Mous
Abstract
The paper discusses a shift in the number system of Proto-Tanzanian Cushitic from the word for “three” to mean “four”, and the one for “two” to mean “three”. This shift was brought about by contact between an incoming group of northern Cushitic speakers and the already present group of Tanzanian Cushitic speakers due to similarity in form between the words for “four” in Tanzanian Cushitic and “three” for in the incoming group. This shift pulled the word for “two” to fill the gap of the old “three” and triggered the innovation of a new internally derived word for “two”. This scenario provides a more intricate view on the Cushitic migration from Ethiopia to Tanzania. Kw’adza joins the rest of Tanzanian Cushitic undergoing this complex and unique set of shifts, but Aasa does not.
Abstract
The paper discusses a shift in the number system of Proto-Tanzanian Cushitic from the word for “three” to mean “four”, and the one for “two” to mean “three”. This shift was brought about by contact between an incoming group of northern Cushitic speakers and the already present group of Tanzanian Cushitic speakers due to similarity in form between the words for “four” in Tanzanian Cushitic and “three” for in the incoming group. This shift pulled the word for “two” to fill the gap of the old “three” and triggered the innovation of a new internally derived word for “two”. This scenario provides a more intricate view on the Cushitic migration from Ethiopia to Tanzania. Kw’adza joins the rest of Tanzanian Cushitic undergoing this complex and unique set of shifts, but Aasa does not.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
- Resurrecting rhymes, reasons and (no) rhotics 5
- Diachronic phonology with Contrastive Hierarchy Theory 20
- The life cycle of phonological patterns explains drift in sound change 35
- The diachronic typology of retroflex vowels 50
- Diachronic shifts among sound ideophones 62
- The classification of the Plains Algonquian languages 79
- Modelling combined linguistic and non-linguistic evidence in language reconstruction 94
- Dissimilatory constraints discriminate between variants in analogical change 110
- Patterns of suppletion in inflection revisited 128
- Differential object marking in early Italo-Romance and old Sardinian 150
- Semantic factors in case loss 166
- Morphosyntactic borrowing in closely related varieties 184
- Nominal privative suffixes as a diachronic source of verbal negative markers 198
- The emergence of oblique subjects 215
- Grammaticalization of sentence adverbs and modal particles revisited 232
- A discourse analysis of left-dislocation in Old English 249
- The semantics of word borrowing in late medieval English 263
- Approximative adverbs in modern and pre-modern languages 279
- The history of numerals as a history of East African languages 294
- Language index 307
- Subject index 309
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
- Resurrecting rhymes, reasons and (no) rhotics 5
- Diachronic phonology with Contrastive Hierarchy Theory 20
- The life cycle of phonological patterns explains drift in sound change 35
- The diachronic typology of retroflex vowels 50
- Diachronic shifts among sound ideophones 62
- The classification of the Plains Algonquian languages 79
- Modelling combined linguistic and non-linguistic evidence in language reconstruction 94
- Dissimilatory constraints discriminate between variants in analogical change 110
- Patterns of suppletion in inflection revisited 128
- Differential object marking in early Italo-Romance and old Sardinian 150
- Semantic factors in case loss 166
- Morphosyntactic borrowing in closely related varieties 184
- Nominal privative suffixes as a diachronic source of verbal negative markers 198
- The emergence of oblique subjects 215
- Grammaticalization of sentence adverbs and modal particles revisited 232
- A discourse analysis of left-dislocation in Old English 249
- The semantics of word borrowing in late medieval English 263
- Approximative adverbs in modern and pre-modern languages 279
- The history of numerals as a history of East African languages 294
- Language index 307
- Subject index 309
