Regarding east Asian languages using two sets of numbers, Japanese gets really complicated with this. The counters for things and days use native Japanese numbers for 1-10, and then numbers loaned in from Chinese further than that. Additionally, the word for people used the native Japanese numerals for 1 and 2 people, and the word for slices uses just the Japanese number for 1 slice.
I think Ilocano has a system where native numbers and Spanish numbers are used in different contexts while both being the same base. So you can still use that number-loaning idea for Taqva Miir even if they're both vigesimal.
5:12 I _believe_ (but I'm no expert) that basically the genitive being present for the numeral 2 is a remnant of the old dual, whose forms fused with some of the other cases (genitive, and I think accusative in some cases as well, like with the feminine or something). It was later re‐analysed as the genitive singular, and eventually it spread to 3 and 4 by analogy. The genitive plural being used for numbers ending in 5‒9 is a completely different origin, in that case I believe it's just literally “five of books” As a side note, I just checked on Wiktionary and the rule is slightly more complicated. When you have a noun phrase in the nominative or accusative with a numeral ending in 2‒4, the noun takes the genitive singular, _except_ if the noun phrase is in the accusative and the noun is animate, in which case it takes the genitive plural. I'm not sure what happens when the noun phrase (hence the numeral) is in a case other than the nominative or accusative ; I think that, contrary to what's stated in the video, in that case everything just takes its expected declension, but it's not very clear to me. Also, the rules for attributive adjectives that modify a noun with such a number are an absolute mess.
As a fluent L2 speaker of Russian who has spent years living in Russophone areas, I can confirm that the rules for using numerals in anything other than nominative or accusative case are ridiculous, and natives will usually paraphrase to avoid that situation, so I couldn't even tell you what they are without looking them up in a reference grammar.
In phrase-structure syntax, quantifier phrases are typically modelled as dominating / being ancestors of noun phrases. So if you have consistent head directionality, it would be expected for cardinal numerals to appear in head position relative to the nouns they "modify", and ordinals to appear in dependent position. This is very clear in Hawai'ian, for example, where the only distinction between cardinals and ordinals is their syntactic position relative to a noun (and cardinals do indeed appear in head position, along with other quantifiers).
Fascinating as always, happy forthcoming new year! I find it quite interesting colors and numbers are rather low on your priorities generally, I think they’re some of the first things that get figured out in the languages I make any reasonable progress with (:
Funnily, what happened in Proto-Celtic looks to have been different, with PIE *penkwe becoming PC *kwenkwe, and then the Brythonic branch (and Gaulish?) went and turned all its initial labialised /k/ into /p/ not dissimilarly to what happened in pre-Grimm PG, while the Goidelic branch preserved it mostly. I wonder if part of what happened in Latin was really down to the /kw/ at the start of the second syllable of P-Italic *kwenkwe rather than influence from *kwetwor.
Really cool to see you work through numerical stuff especially since this is new territory for you and you're learning at the same rate that I'm learning (at least in the video format you've edited). Every video you upload feels like new territory to me, so it's good to finally understand some of the logic behind your reasoning, and some context to the fancy words you use. I got "into" conlanging thanks to highschool latin and with your earlier videos. So I'm outta the loop, but it looks like fun, can't wait to see more videos of challenging discussions. Maybe it would be could to have someone on call to bounce ideas off of?
I don't know if this will be helpful, but I thought I'd share. Like Russian (but a bit more sensibly) Latin uses a mixture of adjectival agreement and case taking with numbers. One (always singular), two (mostly plural with some dual holdovers), and three (always plural) agree with the noun being counted. Most other numbers are indeclinable, but don't trigger any special case constructions; since the numbers between multiples of 10 are a sequence of the multiple and the remainder, the numbers 1-3 past a multiple of 10 show the same agreement. The case marking is not for general counting, but for partitive constructions, selecting a subset of a larger group; most numbers take a prepositional construction using the ablative case, but multiples of 1000 and other non-specific counting words (like few, some, etc.) take a genitive construction.
And building on some of the other things from the video: Latin has a variable adjective placement rule. Most adjectives are after their noun, but adjectives denoting size, quantity and degree come before nouns. The number for a thousand is the only one that is a noun, but only in the plural.
I think the PIE word for 5 historically started with a labio-velar. The labial element overwhelming the consonant is a recurring feature in several daughter languages, such as some branches of Celtic. The bigger question is why Greek ended up with a 't' in their word for 4 (unless THAT was the neighbor influence from 3).
This made me realize (somehow) I really need to redo my noun system for my current conlang. I think it’s because I don’t like how my classes and singular/dual/plural system is working. Just redid my verbs today and I still don’t like it.
Regarding east Asian languages using two sets of numbers, Japanese gets really complicated with this. The counters for things and days use native Japanese numbers for 1-10, and then numbers loaned in from Chinese further than that. Additionally, the word for people used the native Japanese numerals for 1 and 2 people, and the word for slices uses just the Japanese number for 1 slice.
I think Ilocano has a system where native numbers and Spanish numbers are used in different contexts while both being the same base.
So you can still use that number-loaning idea for Taqva Miir even if they're both vigesimal.
5:12 I _believe_ (but I'm no expert) that basically the genitive being present for the numeral 2 is a remnant of the old dual, whose forms fused with some of the other cases (genitive, and I think accusative in some cases as well, like with the feminine or something). It was later re‐analysed as the genitive singular, and eventually it spread to 3 and 4 by analogy.
The genitive plural being used for numbers ending in 5‒9 is a completely different origin, in that case I believe it's just literally “five of books”
As a side note, I just checked on Wiktionary and the rule is slightly more complicated. When you have a noun phrase in the nominative or accusative with a numeral ending in 2‒4, the noun takes the genitive singular, _except_ if the noun phrase is in the accusative and the noun is animate, in which case it takes the genitive plural.
I'm not sure what happens when the noun phrase (hence the numeral) is in a case other than the nominative or accusative ; I think that, contrary to what's stated in the video, in that case everything just takes its expected declension, but it's not very clear to me.
Also, the rules for attributive adjectives that modify a noun with such a number are an absolute mess.
As a fluent L2 speaker of Russian who has spent years living in Russophone areas, I can confirm that the rules for using numerals in anything other than nominative or accusative case are ridiculous, and natives will usually paraphrase to avoid that situation, so I couldn't even tell you what they are without looking them up in a reference grammar.
I’m very excited to see how you handle clause chaining
In phrase-structure syntax, quantifier phrases are typically modelled as dominating / being ancestors of noun phrases. So if you have consistent head directionality, it would be expected for cardinal numerals to appear in head position relative to the nouns they "modify", and ordinals to appear in dependent position. This is very clear in Hawai'ian, for example, where the only distinction between cardinals and ordinals is their syntactic position relative to a noun (and cardinals do indeed appear in head position, along with other quantifiers).
Fascinating as always, happy forthcoming new year! I find it quite interesting colors and numbers are rather low on your priorities generally, I think they’re some of the first things that get figured out in the languages I make any reasonable progress with (:
Five year conlang is crazy
And I thought, that me working on my first conlang for half a year now is a slow conlanger...
Funnily, what happened in Proto-Celtic looks to have been different, with PIE *penkwe becoming PC *kwenkwe, and then the Brythonic branch (and Gaulish?) went and turned all its initial labialised /k/ into /p/ not dissimilarly to what happened in pre-Grimm PG, while the Goidelic branch preserved it mostly.
I wonder if part of what happened in Latin was really down to the /kw/ at the start of the second syllable of P-Italic *kwenkwe rather than influence from *kwetwor.
Really cool to see you work through numerical stuff especially since this is new territory for you and you're learning at the same rate that I'm learning (at least in the video format you've edited). Every video you upload feels like new territory to me, so it's good to finally understand some of the logic behind your reasoning, and some context to the fancy words you use. I got "into" conlanging thanks to highschool latin and with your earlier videos. So I'm outta the loop, but it looks like fun, can't wait to see more videos of challenging discussions. Maybe it would be could to have someone on call to bounce ideas off of?
happy new year bib!
I don't know if this will be helpful, but I thought I'd share. Like Russian (but a bit more sensibly) Latin uses a mixture of adjectival agreement and case taking with numbers. One (always singular), two (mostly plural with some dual holdovers), and three (always plural) agree with the noun being counted. Most other numbers are indeclinable, but don't trigger any special case constructions; since the numbers between multiples of 10 are a sequence of the multiple and the remainder, the numbers 1-3 past a multiple of 10 show the same agreement. The case marking is not for general counting, but for partitive constructions, selecting a subset of a larger group; most numbers take a prepositional construction using the ablative case, but multiples of 1000 and other non-specific counting words (like few, some, etc.) take a genitive construction.
And building on some of the other things from the video:
Latin has a variable adjective placement rule. Most adjectives are after their noun, but adjectives denoting size, quantity and degree come before nouns.
The number for a thousand is the only one that is a noun, but only in the plural.
I think the PIE word for 5 historically started with a labio-velar. The labial element overwhelming the consonant is a recurring feature in several daughter languages, such as some branches of Celtic. The bigger question is why Greek ended up with a 't' in their word for 4 (unless THAT was the neighbor influence from 3).
The language I'm currently working on uses base 8 because most native speakers have 8 fingers (not human)
if a hand is 5, and a person is 20, a foot/two hands and a foot could be 15
This made me realize (somehow) I really need to redo my noun system for my current conlang. I think it’s because I don’t like how my classes and singular/dual/plural system is working. Just redid my verbs today and I still don’t like it.
regarding 33:00
so in other words, the varangian guard brought home sum big numbers ;)
12:13 "两个" never "二个" I think that's the only time to use "两"
(Any measure word ofc)
Aw base 10 my conlang does base 12
I'm a big fan of Base-24: QuadraVigesimal;
because the Lg Amt of Factor'z
FAVz Lg Amt of 'clean' Fractionz'
English] 'Common.Law' tradition
made use of both: Base.12 & Base.20