2010 – 2011

Dissertation presented by Alexander Demoor to the Faculty of Arts and

Philosophy to obtain the degree of Master of Advanced Linguistics in A

Comparative Perspective.

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Gunnar De Boel

The Concordant and Genitival Numeric

Phrases in Indo-European

The Concordant and Genitival Numeric Phrases in Indo-

European

An exploration of their origin and evolution

Alexander Demoor

University of Ghent

Abstract

This exploratory article focuses on a largely neglected aspect of Indo-European linguistics,

namely the internal syntax of the two different types of numeric phrase constructions which

were utilized in Proto-Indo-European. I denominate these constructions as the Concordant

Numeric Phrase and the Genitival Numeric Phrase respectively. In the former, the cardinal

numeral displays concord for case, gender and number with the quantified noun phrase, in the

latter, it teams up with the genitive plural form of the noun phrase, without displaying concord

with it. The origin, status and subsequent evolution of these numeric phrase constructions were

evaluated for Proto-Indo-European and 16 of its descendants. I conclude that the gradual

evolution of the Indo-European numeral system, for which I propose a relative chronology, is

responsible for the general Indo-European rift between the cardinal numerals from ‘one’ to

‘four’ and the ones from ‘five’ to ‘nineteen’. The first set of cardinal numerals could be declined

and consequently required a Concordant Numeric Phrase. As the second set of cardinal

numerals was introduced into the language at a later stage, it was not adapted as well as the first

set, and could not be declined. Hence the genitive case was used to link the quantified noun

phrase with the cardinal numeral as an alternative for concord, giving rise to the Genitival

Numeric Phrase, of which the use was extended to the cardinal numerals from ‘twenty’ onwards,

which were added later still. However, the rift remained and often caused extensive leveling in

favor of one of the two.

Keywords: Indo-European, numeric phrase syntax, numeric phrase typology, cardinal numerals,

numeral systems, number sense, concord

0. Introduction1

Both ancient and modern Indo-European languages reveal the existence of two

syntactically distinct, but semantically equal ways of constructing numeric phrases2.

The first one involves concord in case, gender and number between an adjectivally

used cardinal numeral (henceforth: CN) and the quantified noun phrase. Henceforth I

will refer to this numeric phrase construction as the Concordant Numeric Phrase,

abbreviated as CNP. The CNP is fully compatible with the fusional-flectional nature of

Indo-European, as both the CN and the noun phrase have the ability to jointly adjust

their forms according to the case they need to express. Examples of the CNP in the

oldest comprehensive Indo-European language we know, Vedic Sanskrit, are (1) and

(2), in which we can clearly distinguish concord between the CN and the noun phrase

for the nominative and the locative case respectively:

(1) Trīṇy āyūṃṣi tava Jātavedas, […].

three-NOM.PL / life-NOM.PL / you-GEN.SG / Jātavedas-VOC.SG

“Three lives you have, O Knower of Beings, […].” [RV 3.17.3]

1 Acknowledgements: I wish to express my heartfelt thanks to my supervisor Gunnar De Boel for

scrutinizing the available parts of this dissertation and putting up with the many difficulties involving

its toilsome development. Moreover, I wish to thank Michel De Dobbeleer, Luc De Grauwe, Dieter

Stern, Miriam Taverniers and Mieke Van Herreweghe for providing interesting and useful suggestions

on various occasions. Finally, I owe much gratitude to Martine Rottier for her practical help involving

the acquisition of the extensive source material.

2 The following abbreviations are used throughout the article: A active / ABL ablative / ACC accusative

/ ADV adverb / AOR aorist / CN cardinal numeral / CNP Concordant Numeric Phrase / CoPo comitative

postposition / DAT dative / DU dual / ENCL enclitic / GEN genitive / GNP Genitival Numeric Phrase /

IMP imperative / IMPF imperfect / IND indicative / INESS inessive / INSTR instrumental / JNP

Juxtapositional Numeric Phrase / LOC locative / LoPo locative postposition / MP mediopassive / NEG

negation / NOM nominative / OBL oblique / OPT optative / PAP present active participle / PERL

perlative / PL plural / PPP past passive participle / PRES present / PrS pronominal suffix / SG singular

/ SUBJ subjunctive / VOC vocative. For the abbreviations of the used corpora, I refer to the second part

of the bibliography.

(2) Śunaḥśepo hy ahvad gṛbhītas triṣv Ādityaṃ drupadeṣu baddhaḥ.

Śunaḥśepa-NOM.SG / for / call-AOR.3SG / seize-PPP.NOM.SG / three-LOC.PL

/ Āditya-ACC.SG / pillar-LOC.PL / bind-PPP.NOM.SG

“For Śunaḥśepa, (which had been) seized, bound on three pillars, called the

son of Aditi.” [RV 1.24.13]

The second way of constructing a numerical phrase involves a different strategy to

syntactically link the CN with the quantified noun phrase: The numeral is juxtaposed

to the noun phrase it determines, which then assumes the form of the genitive plural

case. Henceforth I will refer to this numeric phrase construction as the Genitival

Numeric Phrase, abbreviated as GNP. A very literal translation of typical Indo-

European GNPs such as Old Irish tricha cáerach and Old Church Slavonic pętь na

desęte rabъ in English would be ‘(a) thirty of sheep’ and ‘(a) five on ten (= fifteen) of

servants’ respectively, which could be couched in the formula [CARDINAL QUANTITY

of ENTITIES] [Nandriş, 1959: 121; Thurneysen, 1966: 244]. Some examples, once

more from Vedic Sanskrit, display the two distinct forms the GNP could take in

ancient Indo-European, according to the status of its CN component:

(3) Ṣaḍ bhārāṁ Eko acaran bibharty […].

Six / burden-GEN.PL / one-NOM.SG / go-NEG.PAP.NOM.SG / carry-

PRES.A.3SG

“Six burdens the One, who does not go, carries […].” [RV 3.56.2]

(4) Ye me pañcāśataṃ dadur aśvānāṃ sadhastuti.

who-NOM.PL / I-ENCL.DAT.SG / fifty-ACC.SG / give-PERF.3SG / horse-

GEN.PL / with joint praise-ADV

“Who have given fifty horses to me with joint praise.” [RV 5.18.5]

Example (3) involves an indeclinable adjectival CN teaming up with the quantified

noun phrase in the genitive plural. By contrast, example (4) features a declinable

substantival CN which is inflected for the accusative case3, signaling its syntactic role

as a direct object, although the noun phrase it quantifies is not affected by this and

still appears in the genitive plural case.

Since the GNP in (3) occurs as a verbal argument in this particular example, it

might be argued that we are dealing with some sort of bare partitive construction4

here. However, this is very unlikely, as the ‘six burdens’ do not seem to be partially

affected by the action which the verb denotes, that is, they are fully carried.

Alternatively, one could label any ancient Indo-European construction consisting of a

quantifier determining a noun phrase in the genitive plural as a partitive

construction, because these languages do not tend to have definite articles to make

the distinction with the GNP5. Conversely, in many modern Standard Average

European languages the quantified noun phrase in a partitive construction requires a

determiner in the form of a definite article, a demonstrative pronoun or a possessive

pronoun [Jackendoff, 1977: 113; Koptjevskaja-Tamm, 2009: 336-337]. However, one

3 Strictly speaking, since śata- ‘hundred’ is a neuter of the a-stems, one cannot verify whether the case

ending actually indicates a nominative or an accusative singular. Nonetheless other Indo-European

languages confirm the CN for ‘hundred’ to have been inflected, take for instance Modern Lithuanian:

(i) S imt l t nei siver sime.

with / hundred-INSTR.PL / litas (Lithuanian currency)-GEN.PL / make do-NEG.PRES.1PL

“We cannot make do with hundred litas.” [Ambrazas, 1997: 175-176]

Consequently it is reasonable to accept that we are dealing with an accusative singular case.

4 From a typological perspective, the bare partitive construction constitutes a verbal argument

appearing in whichever case encodes partitivity in the appropriate language (usually the genitive in

Indo-European), which alternates with another case, mostly the accusative, to convey various semantic

oppositions, including indefiniteness versus definiteness, incompletion versus completion, affirmative

versus negative statements, unboundedness versus boundedness, and finally partial versus full

affectedness respectively [Hoeksema, 1996: 15-17; Kiparsky, 1998: 268, 301; Luraghi, 2008: 247;

Napoli, 2010: 19-20].

5 In fact, most of the ancient descendants of Proto-Indo-European employed very different strategies to

mark some degree of definiteness, such as individuating derivational suffixes (Proto-Indo-European *-

le, *-ne, and *-de for instance) or case variation [Bauer, 2009: 72-73].

could hardly argue against the GNP in favor of a cardinal partitive construction in the

case of (3) and (4), which would alter their translations to ‘six of the burdens’ and

‘fifty of the horses’ respectively. From a semantic point of view, partitive

constructions express a part-whole relation between a precise or an approximate

subset of a larger referential superset of entities [Hoeksema, 1996: 2-3; Kobuchi-

Philip, 2006: 395; Koptjevskaja-Tamm, 2009: 330]. From a pragmatic point of view,

as proposed by Reed [1996]6, the partitive construction accesses a subset of a

previously evoked discourse entity. If one closely analyzes the context of the Vedic

hymns in which examples (3) and (4) appear, one can see that these do not

communicate a part-whole relation and that they do not access a subset of a discourse

entity which was evoked earlier on in each of the hymns: No burdens or horses are

mentioned in the preceding verses.

Although the situation in other ancient Indo-European languages show the GNPs

in (3) and (4) to be inherited from Proto-Indo-European, the GNP in (3) was probably

already unstable in Late Proto-Indo-European, as the indeclinable CN type it featured

could not by any means express case. Therefore, it need not surprise that a GNP

featuring an indeclinable CN7 could only exist if the numeric phrase functioned as a

subject or a direct object8, since it failed to convey the specialized semantic content of

the other oblique cases. This is probably the reason why we can see a “third” type of

6 Among others Reed [1996: 142-143, 174-178] founds her theory on the works of Webber [1986:

397], who argues that speakers engaged in discourse employ a discourse model composed of various

discourse entities, representing extra-linguistic referents: “A speaker refers to something by

utterances that either evoke (if first reference) or access (if subsequent reference) its corresponding

discourse entity”. It is an indefinite noun phrase which introduces or evokes a new discourse entity,

setting up a discursive blueprint as it were or “starting a new card” according to the Novelty rule, and a

definite one which accesses that same entity or “updates an old card” as stated by the Familiarity rule

[Brogaard, 2007: 410].

7 The Proto-Indo-European CNs ‘five’ to ‘nineteen’ were all indeclinable adjectives. However, in chapter

one I will further elaborate on their status.

8 This is corroborated by the declined substantival CNs dẽšimt ‘ten’ to devýniasdẽšimt ‘ninety’ in Modern

Lithuanian, which can only have its optional inflectionless forms in the nominative and accusative singular

case [Ambrazas, 1997: 175].

numeric phrase construction at work in the different ancient Indo-European

languages, consisting of a CN of the aforementioned type which teams up with a fully

inflected quantified noun phrase. This is exemplified by (5), which features a

quantified noun phrase in the nominative plural case where we would expect a

genitive plural case, i.e. pañca janānām, such as in (3):

(5) Viśve devā Aditiḥ, pañca janā Aditir, jātam Aditir.

all-NOM.PL / god-NOM.PL / Aditi-NOM.SG / five / people-NOM.PL / Aditi-

NOM.SG / be born-PPP.NOM.SG

“Aditi (is) all gods, Aditi (is) the five peoples, Aditi (is) the born.” [RV

1.89.10]

As I will argue in chapter two, this numeric phrase construction constitutes an

intermediary phase between a GNP and a CNP. Accordingly, I do not view it as a truly

autonomous numeric phrase construction (hence the quotation marks on “third”

above). However, since we should at least be able to refer to it in a simple way, I

propose to bring it to the denominator of Juxtapositional Numeric Phrase for lack of a

better name, henceforth abbreviated as JNP.

Examples (1) to (4) confirm that the Indo-European CNP and GNP are to be

perceived as autonomous numeric phrase constructions in the Indo-European

languages, i.e. that they are to be separated from partitive constructions. Still, the

relevant literature has largely taken them for granted, without further inquiring into

their various formal and semantic aspects, and ultimately their origin. Until the

appellations proposed in this article were devised, the CNP and GNP have not borne

names of their own. Furthermore a lot of (important) grammars fail to provide

relevant data about the internal syntax of numeric phrase constructions, as if they

want to give these a wide berth. Thus, the study of the CNP and GNP currently takes

up a very marginal position in the landscape of Indo-European linguistics in the best

case, or even a non-existent one in the worst case: The exploration of the CNP and

GNP offered in this article is, at least to my knowledge, the only one available. Such a

gap in the knowledge of one of the best studied phyla in the world might be

unexpected, but not without challenging opportunities. Therefore the main goal of

this article is the much-needed establishment of numeric phrase syntax as an

autonomous research subject in the field of Indo-European linguistics9, by exploring

its origin and status in Proto-Indo-European and to track its evolution in the different

subphyla which have descended from it.

At this point, it is necessary to state that the CNP and the GNP have more or less

disappeared in a lot of modern Indo-European languages which have lost most or all

of their case-inflection. In the languages that still do actively use it, it is often limited

to a certain set of CNs. As we shall see in the next chapter, the relation between the

CNP and the GNP in Proto-Indo-European reflects this latter observation, in that it

was dependent on the nature of the CNs themselves. The majority of its modern

descendants indicate that the CNP and the GNP have vied with each other for a long

time, with results ranging from a near-complete leveling out in favor of one of the

two, to a systematic compromise between both, cf Brugmann & Delbrück [1911: 6].

To tackle the many problems involving the aforecited main goal of this article , an

explorative and versatile account of a lot of aspects pertaining to both numeric phrase

constructions has to be offered in the next chapters. Firstly, a tentative evolutionary

explanation will be presented as to why there was a categorical rift between the

prime and the non-prime CNs and how this affected the distribution of the CNP and

the GNP in Proto-Indo-European. Some attention will be devoted to the development

of the Indo-European numeral system as well. Secondly the evolution of the

CNP/JNP/GNP-distribution in 16 Indo-European languages from every subphyla will

be tentatively mapped and evaluated. As is the nature of an explorative study, not all

Indo-European languages can be given a chance, which is why the emphasis will lie on

the earlier phases of the most important languages of every subphylum. Justified

exceptions are Albanian, which has only been attested fairly recently, and Modern

9 It need hardly be mentioned that the development of this field of research could substantially benefit

the study of numeric phrase typology as a whole.

Lithuanian, which is generally conservative enough to be treated as an equal between

the ancient languages.

1. Origin of the Indo-European CNP and GNP

As is the case with many aspects of Proto-Indo-European, the opinions on the status

of its CNs differ greatly among specialists. Brugmann & Delbrück [1911: 5-6] asserted

that the numerals from ‘one’ to ‘four’ were declinable adjectives, requiring a CNP,

whilst ‘five’ to ‘nineteen’ were indeclinable adjectives and all numerals from ‘twenty’

onwards were declinable substantives, requiring a GNP. This has become the

generally accepted view, cf Hirt [1927: 308, 310-311], Krahe [1943: 107], Szemerényi

[1996: 221-222] and Watkins [2006: 67]. Meillet [1908: 373-376] deviated from this

paradigm and claimed that the CNs from ‘five’ to ‘nineteen’ were not indeclinable

adjectives, but indeclinable elements reminding of the first part of a Dvigu

compound10. Wackernagel [2009: 467] deemed only the CN ‘one’ to be an adjective,

which gradually caused the larger numerals to shift their categories and start

behaving like adjectives as well over time. By contrast, Meier-Brügger [2006: 236]

has argued that all CNs from ‘one’ to ‘thousand’ originally were “Indeklinablia” in

Proto-Indo-European, always governing the genitive plural case, although the

numerals from ‘one’ to ‘four’ gradually shifted to the adjectival category through the

addition of nominal endings in Proto-Indo-European. Such a view seems to

presuppose that all CNs were already present in pre-Proto-Indo-European, even

though it is more likely that the numeral system was established in various

diachronic stages, as will be substantiated in 1.2. . Lehmann [1974: 69-70, 208, 231-

232] supports a more radical version of Meier-Brügger’s theory, as he thinks that

concord between adjectives and nouns was only a very late development in Proto-

Indo-European: “For an early period of PIE we may assume that adjectives were

10 Dvigu is a concept hailing from Sanskrit grammar. A Dvigu compound is considered to be a special

kind of Karmadhāraya, i.e. an attributive compound, of which the first part is a numeral [Scharpé,

1943: 84].

uninflected, as relic constructions in Hittite [and also Latin, AD] indicate; kurur

[=‘hostile’, AD] […] could be used adjectivally by simply preposing it to nouns”. This

entails that all CNs were originally indeclinable as well, yet “[a]s inflection became

more prominent, the numerals most clearly associated with the number category

came to be inflected”. In other words, the verbal and the nominal singular, dual and

plural categories, already firmly rooted in pre-Proto-Indo-European, influenced the

CNs ‘one’ to ‘four’ to assume singular, dual and plural forms. Hence *Hoino-, *Hoiu o-

and *sem- ‘one’ received singular endings, *du oh1- ‘two’ dual endings and *trei -

‘three’ and kw tu or- ‘four’ plural endings [Beekes, 1990: 212, 254, 256; Brugmann &

Delbrück, 1911: 6-8, 10, 12; Winter, 1992a: 12]. However, if ‘three’ and ‘four’ received

plural endings due to their association with the plural category, why didn’t the same

happen with all CNs from ‘five’ onwards, as these too stood for a non-single, non-dual,

i.e. plural quantity? Unfortunately, Lehmann did not provide an explanation for this

discrepancy.

I will adopt the aforecited, generally accepted view as a framework for this

article. In any case, the origin of the rift between the declinable, adjectival CNs from

‘one’ to ‘four’ and the remaining CNs has important implications for the distribution

of the CNP and the GNP. The distribution of both in Proto-Indo-European was already

sketched above: The declinable adjectival CNs required a CNP, since they relied on

concord to link up with the counted noun phrase, whilst the indeclinable adjectival

and declinable substantival CNs obviously lacked the ability to display concord with

the quantified noun phrase11 and for some reason started to govern the genitive

plural case, as if it were an alternative for the concord of the CNP.

Consequently, two essential question will have to be tackled in the ensuing

subchapters: 1) Where does the Proto-Indo-European division in adjectival and

11 More precisely speaking, the indeclinable adjectival CNs from ‘five’ to ‘nineteen’ did not allow for

concord at all, and the declinable substantival ones from ‘twenty’ onwards were the heads of their

numeric phrases, because they could take the forms of all contextually needed cases due to their ability

to inflect.

substantival CNs come from and 2) what are its implications for the development of

the CNP and GNP?

1.1. The Number sense and the general development of numeral systems

An evolutionary and partly extra-linguistic account seems to urge itself upon us with

regard to the first question posed above. In the Introduction I already referred to

‘one’, ‘two’, ‘three’ and ‘four’ as prime CNs. The reason I utilized this appellation is

because these numeric concepts are grafted onto the so-called number sense, which

will be at the centre stage of my attempt to account for the origin of the Indo-

European adjectival CNs from ‘one’ to ‘four’. Dehaene [2001: 17] has repeatedly

argued that the “foundations of arithmetic lie in our ability to mentally represent and

manipulate numerosities on a mental ‘number line’, an analogical representation of

number”, which “has a long evolutionary history and a specific cerebral substrate”12.

This innate, pre-linguistic ability to discriminate and understand numerosities in our

environment has been called the number sense, and we share it with other animals

(mammals, to be precise), confirming it to be a very ancient trait bestowed upon us

by evolution [Dehaene et al, 1998; Dehaene, 2001; McGregor, 2007]. A crucial notion

in this regard is subitization13, the “direct and accurate perception of numbers up to

about four”, which humans share with other mammals as well; assessment of

numbers above four is only approximate [Clark & Grossman, 2007: 51]. The ability to

actually surpass this approximation, i.e. a precise number sense exceeding the limit of

four, is available to humans, whose cognitive evolution has reached a higher level

than other mammals, but only if it is somehow “activated” and encoded into linguistic

symbols, as these have “a causal role in the acquisition of exact numerical

competence, allowing children to extend their abilities to reason about small numbers

12 In particular, Dehaene [2001: 23] has pointed out that the inferior parietal cortices “contribute to a

biologically-determined numerical representation” as essential nodes in the distributed circuit of

number processing,

13 Gordon [2004: 498] for his part has called this ability parallel individuation.

of objects to larger quantities” [Frank et al, 2008: 819]. The literature dealing with the

number sense does not explicitly mention where the need for this “activation” comes

from. However, one could imagine that the rise of an increasingly complex economy

and social organization since the Neolithic Revolution has influenced the need for

linguistic symbols denoting fixed and precise cardinalities to some extent, at least in

societies which went ahead with it. This assumption is indeed confirmed by some

recent studies dealing with numeral systems and numeral typology, see Epps [2006:

282] for further references. Thus “all children are born with a quantity representation

which provides the core meaning of numerical quantity”, whilst “[e]xposure to a

given language, culture, and mathematical education leads to the acquisition of

additional domains of competence such as a lexicon of number words, a set of digits

for written notation, procedures for multidigit calculation, and so on” [Dehaene:

2001: 27]. Consequently, one would expect that linguistic groups which have not

systematically exploited the (precise) number sense and the innate arithmetic

abilities it provides us with – for instance because their way of living has not (yet)

created the need to precisely assess large(r) quantities – would have a very limited

numerical lexicon. In other words, its inventory of (cardinal) numerals would only

reflect the subitization phase.

Interestingly, this seems to be the case for a number of Australian and Amazonian

languages, which have functioned in societies which have practiced a hunter-gatherer

way of life (sometimes supplemented by a primitive form of agriculture) for many

thousands of years [Dixon & Aikhenvald, 1999a: 9; Epps, 2006: 260]. The Pirahã

language for instance, considered to be an Amazonian isolate, uses a “one-two-many”

numeral system14, with experiments suggesting that the speakers of the language can

only precisely distinguish numerosities up to three and approximate everything

beyond three [Dixon & Aikhenvald, 1999c: 355-356; Gordon, 2004]. Additional

experiments conducted by Frank et al [2008: 823] have caused them to postulate that

14 A more accurate description would be “small imprecise quantity-larger imprecise quantity-many”, as

hói and hoí, traditionally translated as ‘one’ and ‘two’ respectively, do not exclusively denote precise

quantities as CNs in Standard Average European do [Gordon, 2004: 497].

numbers, and thus (cardinal) numerals “may be better thought of as an invention: A

cognitive technology for representing, storing, and manipulating the exact

cardinalities of sets”. This conclusion seems to tie in well with the preserved hunter-

gatherer way of life of the Pirahã, if one is willing the believe that Stone Age cultures,

both in the past and today, have little need for precise number assessment, due to

their fairly simple economy and modest degree of social organization [Dixon &

Aikhenvald, 1999a: 4; Winter, 1999: 43]. A similar situation exists in Amazonian

Mundurukù, a language of Tupí descent, which encodes numerals up to ‘five’, of which

the numerals up to ‘three’ are used for precise distinction, and ‘four’ to ’five’ for

approximate understanding; their economy is based on a mixture of hunting-

gathering and primitive agriculture, reflecting their relatively better distinction of

precise numbers [Dehaene et al, 2004; Rodrigues, 1999: 107]. A cross-linguistic study

of the numeral systems existing in the different Amazonian languages in the Nadahup

phylum shows their numeral inventory to vary from a “one-two-three-many” system

to more complex numeral systems, according to the amount of contact with and the

resulting (linguistic) borrowing from the neighboring non-Nadahup-speaking,

sedentary tribes [Epps, 2006]. Thus, etymological research can unravel the “marks of

successive phases of invention” or borrowing in seemingly monolithic numeral

systems [Hurford, 1987: 78].

1.2. The development of the Indo-European numeral system

That the insight into the universal origin and development of numeral systems

described above in rough outline can be applied to the context of Indo-European

should not be disputed. With the exception of the many roots for expressing ‘one’15,

15 A deictic origin has been proposed for *Hoino- ‘one’ (> Sanskrit ena- ‘he, this one’), comparable with

the numeral ‘one’ in Hup and Yuhup, which most probably developed from the demonstrative pronoun

[Brugmann & Delbrück, 1911: 6, Epps, 2006: 274; Martinez, 1999: 206]. In other words, the notion

‘one’ could initially have been grafted onto the singling out of a referent. *sem- ‘one, together’ seems to

have been motivated by some sense of unification of separate entities into a collective entity [Beekes,

1990: 254; Brugmann & Delbrück, 1911: 7; Köbler, 2000: 222-225]. Finally, *Hoiu o-‘one, alone’

the prime CNs ‘two’, ‘three’ and ‘four’ remain etymologically opaque, [Brugmann &

Delbrück, 1911: 8, 11, 12; Winter, 1992a: 12]. This suggests these to have been

encoded as linguistic counterparts of the basic number sense into pre-Proto-Indo-

European at a very early stage. The forms of ‘one’ and ‘two’ demonstrate that they

already denoted precise quantities early on: ‘one’ clearly encodes an indivisible

singularity, whilst the dual form of ‘two’ points at an exact interpretation of just two

entities. To understand how these numerals came to behave as declinable adjectives,

we should briefly examine the development of inflection in Indo-European. If we take

very early pre-Proto-Indo-European to have known an inflectionless stage, cf Hirt

[1934: 31-33]16, by the time it manifested itself as an inflected language, the

adjectives, substantives and the available inventory of CNs, i.e. ‘one’ to ‘four’, probably

formed one larger category of declinable elements in the language, cf Brugmann &

Delbrück [1911: 653] and Fortson [2010: 134]. By the time Proto-Indo-European

emerged, the substantival and adjectival categories were already differentiated, since

the latter allowed for gender shift and the comparative and superlative degree [Hirt,

1927: 270; Wackernagel, 2009: 465]. Consequently, I reject the vision of Lehmann

[1974: 69, 208], who postulated that Early Proto-Indo-European adjectives could not

be inflected on the basis of some (partly) indeclinable adjectives with a consonantal

stem in Hittite and in Latin, e.g. kurur ‘hostile’ and vetus ‘old’. Although the numerals

constituted a separate semantic category, they were classified as adjectives by their

native speakers to judge from their forms. Hence, as a result of their considerable age,

the prime CNs were fully adapted to the fusional-flectional nature of Indo-European,

which explains their appearance as adjectives in Proto-Indo-European, thus allowing

for the use of a CNP as a syntactically transparent way of constructing numeric

phrases.

encodes separation and individuation, cf Proto-Indo-Iranian *aiu a ‘alone’ > Sanskrit eva ‘just so’ and

iva ‘as, like’ [Brugmann & Delbrück, 1911: 6-7; Emmerick, 1992: 165].

16 It has been argued that all case forms developed from earlier autonomous morphemes, such as

postpositions or determinatives, e.g. nominative and genitive *-s from an older individuating nominal

suffix [Lehmann, 1974: 192].

As we will see, this is not the case with the non-prime numerals. An analysis of

the etymological origins of the non-prime numerals from ‘five’ onwards reveal them

to have secondary motivations, that is, they are derived from an existing lexeme. This

points in the direction of a later date of introduction into the pre-Proto-Indo-

European numeral system than the prime CNs. Let us have a look at the proposed

etymologies of these non-prime CNs. *penkwe- ‘five’ is derived from a root *penkw-

denoting the concept ‘hand’; a Proto-Indo-European etymon *penk(w)sti- ‘fist’ can

even be proposed for forms such as English fist (< Old English fȳst < Proto-Germanic

*funχsti-) and Old Church Slavonic pęstь ‘fist’ [Brugmann & Delbrück, 1911: 4;

Köbler, 2000: 65; Winter, 1992a: 17]17. Szemerényi [1960: 78-79] proposed that

*s(u )eḱs ‘six’ originated in *(H)u eḱs- ‘to grow’; ‘six’ then would mean something like

‘the next (increased) unit after the initial set of five fingers’. After stripping down the

apparent suffixes of *septm , the root *sep- remains isolated and unmotivated,

possibly constituting a borrowing from Semitic [Winter, 1992a: 12, 17]. For

*h3eḱteh3- (alternatively *oḱto-) ‘eight’, it has been argued that it shows traces of a

masculine dual ending in its Sanskrit and Gothic reflexes, i.e. aṣṭ|u and ahtau

respectively, constituting the dual form of the Proto-Indo-European etymon of

Avestan a ti- ‘four (stretched) fingers’, ultimately meaning ‘two times four fingers’,

which hints at the use of multiplication to devise new numerals [Beekes, 1990: 255;

Brugmann & Delbrück, 1911: 3; Macdonell, 1910: 309; Winter, 1992a: 13]. A similar

explanation of *(h1)n u n ‘nine’ has met with many difficulties. The view that it is the

endingless locative of *neu r ‘(the) new (one)’, reinforced by the preposition*en ‘in’ in

17 The use of the human body in counting systems seems to be a universal characteristic typical of, but

not restricted to human societies without a systematic knowledge of arithmetic. Often this counting

system is limited to the fingers and the hands [Gordon, 2004: 496]. As is witnessed from the cortical

homunculus, the inferior parietal cortices, which, as was mentioned in footnote 11, are crucial for the

number sense, are located in the direct vicinity of the part of the brain which regulates finger

movement, suggesting that “the human number sense is intimately tied with counting on the fingers”

from a neuro-biological perspective [Clark & Grossman, 2007: 52]. There are even languages in which

the numerals are based on body parts from the entire upper body, functioning according to a complex

sequence of body parts, such as Oksapmin, a Trans-New Guinean language [Saxe, 1981: 307].

Greek ennéa (of which the geminate [n:] is hard to account for otherwise) and

Armenian inn, does not comply with the principles of Occam’s razor, for it must resort

to unnecessary new assumptions to explain the corresponding Greek ordinals

displaying only one /n/ [Beekes, 1990: 255; Köbler, 2000: 46; Waanders, 1992: 373;

Winter, 1992a: 13-14, 17; Winter, 1992g: 350]. However, if this view were to be true,

the laryngeal which has traditionally been reconstructed for this root would have to

be removed, furthermore the fact that ‘nine’ originally meant something like ‘in the

new’ would suggest the existence of a quaternary system, with ‘nine’ denoting a new

element after the second set of four, i.e. ‘eight’. This conflicts with the suggested

meaning of *d ḱm t ‘ten’ as ‘two hands’ (*ḱm t- ‘hand’ > Gothic handus ‘hand’, Greek -

konta ‘decade’, Sanskrit -ś|t ‘decade’) , which lends support to the existence of an

earlier quinary system, although the absence of the /u / in *dé- (< *du - ‘two’) has not

been expounded sufficiently [Brugmann & Delbrück, 1911: 4; Szemerényi, 1960: 69;

Winter, 1992a: 17]18. All remaining CNs are derived from the combination of the

prime and non-prime CNs from ‘one’ to ‘ten’. In this regard, three words for

‘thousand’ form an important exception. The first form *ǵheslo-, attested in Greek

kh lioi, Sanskrit sahásra- and Avestan hazaŋra- (with sa-/ha- < *sm - ‘one’) and

possibly Latin mīlle (< *mīli < *smih2ǵhslih2-, a female /ī/-stem variation on the

Sanskrit and Avestan forms), derives from another word for ‘hand’ (cf Greek kheír

and Hittite ke ( )ar < *ǵhesr - and Sanskrit hásta < *ǵhesto-), perhaps originally

designating a handful of small, innumerable objects, such as grains of corn [Beekes,

1990: 150, 258; Coleman, 1992: 407-408; Eichner, 1992: 72; Meier-Brügger, 2002:

239]. The Tocharian data yields Turfanian yaltse and Kučean wälts, both meaning

‘thousand’, which can be reflexes of *u eldho- ‘(provided with) strength’ or *u elos-

‘greatness’; it might have modified the CN ‘hundred’ before attaining its status as a

separate lexical unit; the original phrase then meant ‘great, strong hundred’ [Krause

18 In correspondence with the universal development of numeral systems mentioned in this

subchapter, we had best assumed the existence of a quinary system prior to the emergence of a

decimal one; once firmly established the latter replaced the former in terms of productivity. For a

similar view, see Martínez [1999].

& Thomas, 1960: 160; Winter, 1992c: 124]. ‘Thousand’ as a combination of ‘strength’

and ‘hundred’ is also apparent in the composition *túh1(s)ḱm to-, which has only been

attested in Germanic and Balto-Slavonic (cf Proto-Germanic *þūsχundi-, Lithuanian

tūkstantis and Old Church Slavonic tysę ti), with the first element denoting ‘great,

very’ (cf Sanskrit tuvi- ‘very, much’, Low German dūst ‘swelling’ and Lithuanian tūkti

‘to get fat’) [Comrie, 1992: 792; Entwistle & Morison, 1969: 144; Krause, 1968: 188;

Zinkevičius, 1996: 136].

As was argued above, the emergence of linguistic symbols encoding precise

number concepts above four is tied in with specific needs originating in a way of life

that has developed more complex socio-economical principles than the ones existent

in hunter-gatherer societies, cf the notion of numerals as pieces of cognitive

technology proposed by Frank et al [2008]. The mixed economy of agriculture and

pastoralism associated with the Kurgan culture, which according to the traditional

hypothesis of Gimbutas consisted of the speakers of (pre-)Proto-Indo-European,

satisfies such a condition, as the “raising of livestock, let alone trading activities,

makes mastery of a range of numerals essential” [Beekes, 1990: 77-78; Fortson, 2004:

41; Winter, 1999: 43]. So it became to be that the Indo-Europeans gradually extended

the numeral inventory of their language “by borrowing or innovating higher and

higher sets of numerals to meet their changing needs” [Epps, 2006: 260].

Having established the gradual character of the numeral system’s development, a

relative chronology of its various stages can now be suggested. The precise age of the

prime CNs cannot be determined. The evidence provided above leads one to suspect

that they are nearly as old as the phenomenon of human language itself; as a result,

we can assume them to have already been a solid part of the small pre-Proto-Indo-

European numeral system. Brugmann & Delbrück [1911: 3] presumed that the

motivation of the non-prime CNs had already reached a status of semantic opacity in

Proto-Indo-European: “Die konkrete Sachvorstellung, die ursprünglich in die

Zahlbegriffe eingeschlossen gewesen muss, war schon in uridg. Zeit daraus

eliminiert”. Moreover, no proto-forms can be reconstructed for ‘eleven’ to ‘nineteen’

and even for (most of) the decades on the basis of the data in the daughter languages

[Beekes, 1990: 255-257]. This allows us to put forward the proposition that the

terminus ad quem for the emergence of the non-prime numerals from ‘five’ to ‘ten’

(and consequently an early quinary system, cf footnote 18) is Proto-Indo-European.

The emergence of the non-prime numerals from ‘eleven’ onwards could then have

taken place in the transitional period between the already dialectally differentiated

Late Proto-Indo-European and the furcation into its different subphyla19. This latter

conclusion seems consistent with the finding of Hurford [1987: 82] that “[t]here can

be an early stage in the development of any numeral system when it has a small

lexicon but no syntax internal to the numeral system — no way of putting number

words together to form expressions for further numbers”; the appearance of such a

syntax20 allowed for the invention of higher numerals from ‘eleven’ onwards in the

Late-Proto-Indo-European of the economically complex Early Bronze Age21. Table 1

schematically depicts the proposed development of the Indo-European numeral

system according to relative chronology. Of course, a lot of details remain to be

elaborated.

19 Lehmann [2007: 6.6] comments on the Germanic numeral system that “[w]e may conclude that the

Germanic speakers maintained the simple economy of the Indo-European culture for some time, but

gradually expanded it, leading also to expansion of the numeral system”. The same thing could be

maintained for the speakers of Indo-Iranian, Armenian, Balto-Slavonic, Italic, Celtic, etc .

20 The syntactic strategies to combine prime and non-prime CNs to form new ones from ‘eleven’

onwards differ for every sub-phylum, for a concise overview see Winter [1992: 23].

21 One might argue that Proto-Indo-European already knew the concept for ‘one hundred’, since the

proto-form *(d)ḱm tóm can easily be reconstructed; however, its etymological meaning is ‘decade, that

which makes ten’, suggesting an initial approximate use, to convey numerosities larger than the fixed

quantity of ‘ten’ [Beekes, 1990: 258; Watkins, 2006: 67].

‘1’ to ‘4’ ‘5’ to ‘10’ ‘11’ to ‘19’ ‘20’ ≥

pre-Proto-Indo-

European

X ~ / /

Early Proto-Indo-

European

X X ~ /

Late Proto-Indo-

European

X X ~ ~

Post-Proto-Indo-

European

X X X X

Table 1: Development of the Indo-European numeral system according to relative

chronology22.

1.3. Origin of the CNP and the GNP

My proposal is that the gradual development of the Indo-European numeral system is

responsible for the rift between the prime and the non-prime CNs. As the CNs from

‘five’ to ‘nineteen’ were introduced into the numeral inventory only later on, they

were not formally analyzed as adjectives by the native speakers. Thus they were less

adapted to the nature of the pre-Proto-Indo-European language than the prime ones.

This would vouch for their indeclinable character. The decades were introduced later

still, somewhere in the already dialectally differentiated Late Proto-Indo-European

period, which is corroborated by the fact that no single proto-form of these can be

reconstructed for all of the languages. Although the decades are generally considered

to have been declinable substantives, some indeclinable versions suggest that they

were originally treated as indeclinable substantives, in conjunction with the

indeclinable CNs from ‘five’ to ‘nineteen’ [Brugmann & Delbrück, 1911: 30]. In any

case, due to the inability of both sets of the non-prime CNs to express adjectival

concord when quantifying a noun phrase, some form of alternative syntactic link with

22 The symbols “X”, “~” and “/” signify that the concerned set of numerals has been introduced, is being

introduced or has not yet been introduced into the numeral system during the appropriate period

respectively.

the quantified noun phrase had to be established. This was achieved by the genitive

plural case of the quantified noun.

Some specialists have indirectly shown that they consider the genitive governed

by a CN in a GNP to constitute a separate semantic class , by the appellations they

have devised, e.g. “Genitiv des Gezahlten” [Brugmann & Delbrück, 1911: 6, 38],

“Genitiv der Mengenangabe” [Meier-Brügger, 2007: 236], “genitive of the things

enumerated” [Thurneysen, 1966: 244] or even the plain “dependent genitive”

[Whitney, 1889: 183]. Yet, most of them have not made any statements whatsoever

about its semantics, as if they shun(ned) the subject. Others, such as Brugmann &

Delbrück [1911: 597-598], receded from their earlier appellation and eventually still

classified it as a partitive genitive. As was briefly discussed in the introduction of this

article, this is grafted onto the fact that the nature of the GNP has often been

wrongfully equated with that of the partitive construction. In fact, the GNP rather

reminds one of a so-called pseudo-partitive construction23. The problematic

semantics of the genitive utilized in the GNP is worth an article of its own, but as we

cannot go more deeply into it here, the statement that it acts as an alternative for

adjectival concord will suffice until further notice.

23 The basic assumption is that in a pseudo-partitive construction the “N1 establishes the unit of

measurement and N2 signifies the type of substance or entity that is being measured” [Hankamer &

Mikkelsen, 2008: 322], cf also Koptjevskaja-Tamm [2009]. Regrettably, the exact nature of the pseudo-

partitive construction is obscured by the many idiosyncratic views of specialists, which have made it

unfeasible to make a first attempt at a comprehensive differentiation of the GNP, the partitive and the

pseudo-partitive construction within the scope of this article.

2. Evolution of the CNP, the JNP and the GNP

In chapter 1, I covered the likely distribution of the CNP (required by the CNs from

‘one’ to ‘four’) and the GNP (required by the CNs from ‘five’ onwards) in Proto-Indo-

European, which is based on comparative research of the situation in its daughter

languages. So far this research has never been explicitly summarized, that is, so far,

the evolution of the distribution of both numeric phrase constructions has never been

mapped out. Therefore I will offer a concise overview of this evolution in the

following subchapter. The emphasis will lie on the older stages of each of the

subphyla, as it would be impossible to account for the situation in all of the medieval

and modern Indo-European languages, at least within the scope of this article. At the

end of this chapter, Table 3 will summarize the distribution in the examined

languages.

That language can significantly change over time is a linguistic truism.

Accordingly, the status of the Proto-Indo-European CNs changed in the language

systems of its descendants, affecting the original distribution of the CNP and the GNP.

The tension between the declinable status of ‘one’ to ‘four’ and the indeclinable status

of the remaining CNs often caused leveling in favor of the former in the long run, and

as more and more CNs became declinable24, the GNP had to yield to more peripheral

positions, i.e. higher CNs, sometimes completely disappearing altogether [Brugmann

& Delbrück, 1911: 6, 660]. The key for understanding this ousting process is the JNP,

which was already briefly mentioned in the Introduction.

The JNP proves that the strategy to use the genitive case as an alternative to

concord was not a solid one. As the numerals from ‘five’ to ‘nineteen’ could not be

declined in Proto-Indo-European, they failed to express any of the non-accusative

oblique cases. Neither could the quantified noun do this, as it already took the shape

of a genitive plural. As a result, probably somewhere in Late Proto-Indo-European,

24 I will only treat inflected CNs which appear in the context of a numeric phrase. The CNs could also be

substantivized for various reasons, e.g. for expressing a partitive construction such as the two of them.

The analysis of these numeral substantives is not included in this article.

the intermediary JNP construction arose, in which the CN remained indeclinable, but

all case information was handled by the quantified noun phrase. This evolution

ultimately paved the way for status shift of the CNs from ‘five’ to ‘nineteen’, as they

copied the behavior of the quantified noun phrase and acquired case endings. Hence

they could express concord and appear in a CNP. Interestingly, we can utilize Vedic

Sanskrit to reconstruct the sequence of this process, as it synchronically displays its

various stages:

(6) Daśa Te kalaśānāṃ hiraṇyānām […].

ten / you-ENCL.GEN.SG / jar-GEN.PL / golden-GEN.PL

“Ten golden jars from You (we got) […].” [RV 4.32.19]

(7) Sa suṣṭubhā Sa stubhā sapta vipraiḥ svareṇādriṃ svaryo Navagvaiḥ.

this-NOM.SG / shrill cry-INSTR.SG / this-NOM.SG / praise-INSTR.SG / seven

/ singer-INSTR.PL / voice-INSTR.SG / mountain-ACC.SG / roaring-NOM.SG /

Navagva-INSTR.PL

“You with a shrill cry, You with praise, with the seven singers, the

Navagva’s, roaring with the voice, (You have rent) the mountain.” [RV

1.62.4]

(8) Amī ye sapta raśmayas tatrā me nābhir ātatā.

that-NOM.PL / which-NOM.PL / seven / ray-NOM.PL / thither / I-

ENCL.GEN.SG / origin-NOM.PL / spread-PPP.NOM.PL

“Those seven rays, which thither my origins (are) spread.” [RV 1.105.9]

(9) Saptabhiḥ putrair Aditir upaprait pūrvyaṃ yugam.

seven-INSTR.PL / son-INSTR.PL / Aditi-NOM.SG / come into-IMPF.A.3SG /

first-ACC.SG / era-ACC.SG

“With seven sons Aditi came into the first era.” [RV 10.72.9]

If the GNP took up the subject or direct object position, the indeclinable CN did not

need a case ending, conserving the genitive plural form of its quantified noun phrase,

e.g. (3) and (6). Whenever another case was required by the discursive context, the

quantified noun phrase could express it, e.g. (7). Little by little, this behavior intruded

in all positions, even in the subject and direct object positions that originally required

a GNP, giving rise to the intermediary JNP construction witnessed in (8). The next

obvious step was that the CN itself would conform to the behavior of the quantified

noun phrase, becoming declinable in the process and requiring a CNP, such as (9). In

some cases, this ousted the GNP to higher positions, i.e. the numerals from ‘twenty’

onwards. We arrive at the following schematic representation of this leveling process:

Status of the CN Type of numeric phrase construction

Phase one Indeclinable GNP in subject and direct object positions

JNP in all other positions

Phase two Indeclinable JNP in all positions

Phase three Declinable CNP in all positions

Table 2: Leveling process of GNPs featuring a CN from the indeclinable adjectival set (‘five’ to

‘nineteen’).

As we shall see in the overview of the individual languages below, not all languages

reached phase three and encoded a complex combination of the CNP, the JNP and the

GNP. Moreover, the GNPs required by the CNs from ‘twenty’ onwards were generally

unaffected by this process, as these were introduced into the numeral inventory as

declinable substantives. Consequently, they could perfectly convey the specific

information of the genitive, dative, ablative, instrumental and locative cases if the

discursive context required these, so their quantified noun phrases could remain in

the genitive plural case.

2.1. Anatolian

The mere age of the most important language of the Anatolian subphylum, namely

Hittite, could be expected to shed important light on the problems surrounding the

numeric phrase constructions. Regrettably, very little is known about the Anatolian

numerals, due to the use of ideograms of Sumerian or Akkadian origin to denote these

numerals, obscuring the Hittite form [Sturtevant, 1933: 36-37]. What is known about

their inflected forms confirms the fully declinable nature of the CNs from 'one' to

'four’ [Friedrich, 1960: 71; Eichner, 1992: 32, 47, 64, 75]. Yet, a Common Anatolian

innovation, which caused a secondary set of CNs based on /-nt-/-stems to arise,

makes it impossible “[…] to determine whether the plain cardinals from “5” onwards

were in part indeclinable as in Proto-Indo-European” [Eichner, 1992: 91].

In Hittite, a noun determined by a CN could appear both in the singular and the

plural, but the fact that there are chaotic overlaps between the case endings of

singular and plural nouns deprives any conclusions about the status of the Hittite

numeric phrase constructions of their argumentative value [Friedrich, 1960: 117;

Sturtevant, 1933: 163]. In other words, one can justifiably state that the scarcity of

reliable Anatolian data prevents this subphylum from being a worthwile contributor

to this article.

2.2. Indo-Iranian

Vedic Sanskrit éka- ‘one’, dvá- ‘two’, trí- ‘three’ and catúr- ‘four’ reflect the Proto-Indo-

European situation, as these are declinable adjectival CNs exclusively requiring a

CNP; dvá- requires the dual [Macdonell, 1910: 308-309]. In the Rig Veda páñca ‘five’

to návadaśa ‘nineteen’ display complex fluctuations, which were treated in the

introduction of this chapter. That the different phases of the leveling process are all

synchronically present in Vedic Sanskrit shows it to be a language in full transition

[Emmerick, 1992: 164-165; Macdonell, 1910: 310]. CNs from viṃś|ti ‘twenty’

onwards are declinable substantives, like in Proto-Indo-European, and often require a

GNP, as was exemplified by (4). Nonetheless one can ascertain a growing tendency to

use these numerals as adjectives in a CNP, by analogy of the lower numerals

[Emmerick, 1992: 172-173, 176; Macdonell, 1910: 307, 310].

The fixed Pāṇinian grammar of Classical Sanskrit essentially has the same

distribution, except that ‘five’ to ‘nineteen’ have completed their status shift and

exclusively appear in CNPs, with only a few exceptions proving the rule [Scharpé,

1943: 34-35; Whitney, 1889: 183].

Although the situation needs clarifying, the different Prakrit languages do not

seem to deviate from the system of Classical Sanskrit too much. The only exception is

Pāli and Aśokan Prakrit ekūnavīsati- ‘nineteen’, which has been added to the set of

the declinable substantival CNs from vīsa(ti-) ‘twenty’ onwards [Duroiselle, 1997: 62,

65; Norma, 1992: 200, 209; Oberlies 2007: 212-214]. Therefore it often appears in

GNPs, and is an interesting example of a categorical shift influenced from above.

The Avestan numerals aēuua ‘one’, duua- ‘two’, θri- ‘three’ and caθβar- ‘four’ are

identical in use with their Vedic Sanskrit counterparts [Emmerick, 1992: 291-293,

295; Jackson, 1975: 107; Reichelt, 1909: 213-214]. The ensuing CNs are problematic

to assess, due to the lack of attention of the grammars for the syntax of the numeric

phrases in which they appear. The CNs panca ‘five’ to dasa ‘ten’ are merely listed as

indeclinable adjectives. Nonetheless, three rare genitive plural forms of panca ‘five’,

nauua ‘nine’ and dasa ‘ten’ occur in a CNP, e.g. dasanąm aspanąm aojō ‘ten-GEN.PL

horse-GEN.PL strength-NOM.SG’ [Reichelt, 1909: 215]. These attestations point in the

direction of a status shift from an indeclinable to a declinable adjectival CN,

comparable with the Sanskrit and Prakrit situation. Emmerick [1992: 290] attributes

this status shift to a Proto-Indo-Iranian innovation, which applies to Indo-Aryan in

general: The fact that different sound changes caused the CNs from ‘five’ to ‘ten’ to

end with /a/ might have precipitated the association with the adjectival CNs from

‘one’ to ‘four’. Most numerals from *aēuuandasa ‘eleven’ to *nauuadasa ‘nineteen’

have to be reconstructed from the corresponding ordinal numerals, but are reported

to have been indeclinable, perhaps requiring a GNP [Emmerick, 1992: 301; Jackson,

1975: 106]. All numerals from vīsaiti- ‘twenty’ onwards are declinable substantives

and require a GNP [Brugmann & Delbrück, 1911: 38; Reichelt, 1909: 215-216;

Skjærvø, 2003: 208-209].

2.3. Greek

Unfortunately, no numeric phrases have been attested in Mycenaean Greek

[Waanders, 1992: 385-386]. Like in Proto-Indo-European, Attic Greek heĩs ‘one’, treĩs

‘three’ and téttares ‘four’, including all cognate forms in Homeric Greek and the other

dialects, are inflected and operate in CNPs [Kühner & Blass, 1966: 621, 632; Smyth,

1968: 105; Waanders, 1992: 369, 370-371]. The situation is notoriously messy for

Attic Greek dúo and Homeric Greek dúo/dúō ‘two’. Generally this CN is indeclinable in

Homeric Greek, allowing for the use of a JNP, e.g. dúō potamȭn ‘two river-GEN.PL, i.e.

of two rivers’; in Attic Greek and the other dialects it is optionally declined, yielding

such variations as dúo hēmeraĩs ‘two day-DAT.PL’ (JNP) and duoĩn hēmeraĩs ‘two-

DAT.PL day-DAT.PL’ (CNP) [Chantraine, 1958: 260, Kühner, & Blass, 1966: 633, 635].

The CNs pénte ‘five’ to ennéa kaì enenḗkonta kaì hekatón ‘hundred ninety-nine’ are all

indeclinable and occur in JNPs, e.g. teĩkhos hept{ stadíōn ‘wall-NOM.SG seven stade-

GEN.PL, i.e. a wall of seven stades’; from diākósioi ‘two hundred’ onwards, all CNs are

treated as adjectives requiring a CNP [Nunn, 1948: 17; Smyth, 1968: 103, 105;

Waanders, 1992: 372-378]. The discrepancy between the declinable CNs from ‘one’ to

‘four’ and the ones from ‘200’ onwards on the one hand and the indeclinable block

from ‘five’ to ‘hundred ninety-nine’ is striking. Why all CNs from ‘two hundred’

onwards have changed their substantival status, inherited from Proto-Indo-European,

to an adjectival one, I cannot elucidate.

2.4. Italic

Not much is known about the numeral inventory of the different Sabellic languages.

Umbrian inscriptions show the CNs for ‘one’, ‘two’ and ‘three’ to be inflected in a CNP,

of which (10), (11) and (12) are three examples:

(10) Unu suřu pesutru fetu tikamne iuvie.

one-ACC.SG / pig (adj.)-ACC.SG / ?-ACC.SG / sacrifice-IMP.PRES.A.2SG /

Dicamnus-DAT.SG / Jupiter-DAT.SG

“Sacrifice one pig-pesutru to Jupiter Dicamnus.” [Poultney, 1959: 172]

(10) Erucom Prinuatur dur |etuto.

He-ABL.SG.CoPo / Prinovatus-NOM.PL / two-NOM.PL / go-IMP.PRES.A.3SG

“That the two Prinovati go with him.” [Wallace, 2007: 39-40]

(11) Iuve Krapuvi tre buf fetu.

Jupiter-DAT.SG / Grabovius-DAT.SG / three-ACC.PL / cow-ACC.PL /

sacrifice-IMP.PRES.A.2SG

“To Jupiter Grabovius sacrifice three cows.” [Wallace, 2007: 36]

An interesting case is desenduf ‘twelve-ACC.PL’, which is probably inflected because

the digit dur ‘two’ is the head of the compound [Poultney, 1959: 105, 107; Wallace,

2007: 27]. We cannot infer that CNs from ‘five’ to ‘nineteen’ (?) operated in CNPs on

this form alone, though.

The only known CN from the Oscan language is petora ‘four’, which may have the

form of a nominative or accusative plural case, although this is not at all certain; the

form pettiur occurs on a damaged tablet without context, hence it is of little value to

us [Buck, 1904: 138; Coleman, 1992: 394; Wallace, 2007: 27]. Example (12) contains

the CN for ‘thirty’, though it is represented in the inscription by ciphers only; yet, its

syntactic context is of interest to us:

(12) Eisucen ziculud | zicolom XXX nesimum comonom ni hipid.

that-ABL.SG.LoPo / day-ABL.SG / day-GEN.PL / thirty / next-GEN.PL /

assembly meeting-ACC.SG / not-NEG / hold-SUBJ.PERF.A.3SG

“From that day, within the next thirty days, he shall not hold an assembly

meeting.” [Buck, 1904: 196]

According to Wallace [2007: 37] and Buck [1904: 196], we can see a genitive of time

at work here. Their interpretation suggests that both nesimum and XXX are adjectives

determining zicolom in a CNP. However, it is equally probable that zicolom is a

genitive plural governed by XXX in a GNP, with nesimum determining XXX; the fact

that a decade like ‘thirty’ was a substantive governing a genitive plural in Late Proto-

Indo-European strengthens the second assumption. Yet, ultimately, there is no

definite answer to this question, due to the lack of unequivocal data.

Of the Latino-Faliscan languages Faliscan provides us with nothing of relevance.

By contrast Latin, which was Europe’s main religious and scientific medium for many

centuries, proffers an absolutely copious amount of data. The CNs ūnus ‘one’, duō

‘two’ and trēs ‘three’ are all fully declinable, occurring in CNPs; an unusual evolution

is the preference of popular Latin to use indeclinable variants of duō and trēs in a JNP,

e.g. duō verbīs ‘two word-ABL.PL’ instead of duōbus verbīs ‘two-ABL.PL word-

ABL.PL’, which was probably implemented by analogy with the next set of CNs

[Coleman, 1992: 389-393; Ernout, 1945: 168-171; Kieckers, 1960: 107-108; Vineis,

2006: 298]. Quattuor25 ‘four’ to centum nōnāgintā novem ‘hundred ninety-nine’

remain uninflected and require a JNP [Coleman, 1992: 395-404; Ernout, 1945: 171-

174]. Originally indeclinable in Old Latin, the CNs from ducentī ‘two hundred’ to

nōngentī nōnāgintā novem ‘nine hundred ninety nine’ developed a declinational

pattern from Classical Latin onwards [Kieckers, 1960: 111; Vineis, 2006: 299].

Interestingly, the previous two sets of CNs share a similar status and numeric phrase

construction distribution with Greek. In all probability, this correspondence came

about by borrowing. Notwithstanding, this needs further investigation. Finally, in

older phases of Latin and in conservative speech, mīlle ‘thousand’, and its plural

counterparts mīlia/millia ‘thousands’ were declinable substantives requiring a GNP,

e.g. (13); in later phases mīlle became an indeclinable adjective requiring a JNP,

probably under the influence of centum ‘hundred’[Coleman, 1992: 407; Ernout, 1945:

174; Kieckers, 1960: 112]:

25 In contrast with Oscan, Latin has lost its declension of quattuor, brought about by “the confusion

engendered between the masculine [/feminine, AD] and neuter forms following regular phonetic

processes” [Vineis, 2006: 298].

(13) Ibi occīditur mīlle hominum.

there / fell-IND.PRES.P.3SG / thousand-NOM.SG / man-GEN.PL

“There are felled one thousand men.” [Ernout, 1945: 174]

2.5. Tocharian

The Tocharian data suffers from the same shortcomings as the Avestan data, since

specialists hardly care to describe the syntactic patterns of the numerical phrases

existing in both Tocharian languages. Turfanian ṣe and Kučean sas ‘one’ are the only

CNs that display full concord with the quantified noun phrase, whilst the numerals

from ‘two’ to ‘four’ mainly display concord for gender, sometimes for case, with the

exceptions of Kučean wi ‘two’ and Turfanian śtwar ‘four’ [Krause & Thomas, 1960:

158; Winter, 1992c: 98, 103-104, 106-107]. Thus, with some circumspection it can be

stated that Tocharian ties in with the Indo-European situation with respect to the

numerals from ‘one’ to ‘four’, which all require a CNP. The literature lists scarcely

attested instances of inflected forms of the cardinals numerals from ‘five’ onwards,

but does not provide any information whatsoever about the syntactic context in

which these appear [Krause & Thomas, 1960: 158-160; Winter, 1992c: 107-110, 112-

129]. However, a modest corpus research of Turfanian offers us the insight that the

CNs are indeclinable in the majority of the cases; from Turfanian päñ and Kučean

piś/pīś ‘five’ onwards a JNP is required:

(14) […] täprenäk täprenäk päñ pärkowäntu mäskaṃtr-äṃ.

so (much) / so (much) / five / advantage-NOM.PL / be-PRES.MP.3PL.PrS

“[…] just so the five advantages are for him.” [TO 2.18]

(15) Kāsu ñomklyu tsraṣiśśi śäk kälymentwaṃ sätkatär.

good-NOM.SG / fame-NOM.SG / strong-GEN.PL / ten / direction-LOC.PL /

spread-PRES.MP.3SG

“The good fame of the strong spreads in the ten directions.” [TO 1.1]

(16) Okät-tmāṃ puklā wrasaśśi śolaṃ Vipaśyi ñomā ptāñkät ṣeṣ.

eighty thousand / year-OBL.PL / living being-GEN.PL / life-LOC.SG /

Vipaśyin-NOM.SG / name-PERL.SG / Buddha-NOM.SG / be-IMPF.A.3SG

“For eighty thousand years in the life of living beings there was a

Buddhalord Vipaśyin by name.” [TO 3.26]

2.6. Celtic

The oldest known Goidelic language, Old Irish, is of most use to us here, since it is a

relatively richly inflected language, as opposed to the Old Welsh, Middle Cornish and

Old Breton, which had already lost all of their declensions before they were first

attested [Green, 1992: 538]. Old Irish possesses a complex set of possibilities to

construct numerative phrases, largely reflecting the Proto-Indo-European situation.

oín-/óen- ‘one’ is only used in compounds; to denote a single entity, the singular of a

noun phrase is used without an accompanying CN, e.g. claidib ‘of a/one sword’

[Green, 1992: 502, 504; Thurneysen, 1966: 176, 231]. The declinable adjectival CNs

da ‘two’, tri ‘three’ and cethair ‘four’ follow the Proto-Indo-European pattern and

display concord for case, gender and number; da requires a dual [Green, 1992: 501,

506-508; Thurneysen, 1966: 242]. The indeclinable cóic ‘five’ to deich ‘ten’ require a

JNP [Green, 1992: 509-510; Stifter, 2006: 117; Thurneysen, 1966: 243]. The pure

decades from fiche ‘twenty’ to nócha ‘ninety’, cét ‘hundred’ and míle ‘thousand’ (a

borrowing from Latin) are all fully declinable substantives which always occur in a

GNP, however, all higher CNs featuring a combination of digits with decades,

hundreds or thousands, of which ‘12’, ‘453’ and ‘3582’ are salient examples, team up

with deac ‘decade’ (< Proto-Celtic *dekamkom ‘with ten’), the genitive plural of the

decades from ‘twenty’ to ‘ninety’ and the preposition ar respectively; when utilized in

numeric phrases the quantified noun phrase takes its place after the digit, of which

the behavior conforms to the aforecited description of the CNs ‘one’ to ‘nine’, e.g. cóic

garptib deac ‘five chariot-DAT.PL decade, i.e. for fifteen chariots’ and ocht sailm

sechtmogat ‘eight psalm-NOM.PL seventy-GEN.PL, i.e. seventy-eight psalms’ [Green,

1992: 502-503; 511-512; Stifter, 2006: 117; Thurneysen, 1966: 245]. The following

examples show the general possibilities of constructing a numerical phrase existing in

Old Irish once more26, viz the CNP||JNP from ‘two’ to ‘nine’, and the GNP for the pure

decades, hundreds and thousands from ‘twenty’ onwards:

(17) Inlaat noí cairptiu dia dofunn.

yoke-IND.PRES.A.3PL / nine / chariot-ACC.PL / to-PrS.3PL / the expelling-

DAT.SG

“They yoke nine chariots for their expelling.” [OI 1]

(18) […] ocus cét mbó finn náuderg im diaid […]

and / hundred / cow-GEN.PL / white-GEN.PL / red-eared-GEN.PL / in-

PrS.1SG/ end-ACC.SG

“[…] and hundred white, red-eared cows after me […].” [OI 4]

2.7. Germanic

With reference to the distribution of the CNP, JNP and GNP, the ancient Germanic

languages have developed a fine equilibrium between conservative and innovative

features [Voyles, 1992: 243-246]. Gothic is of paramount importance for the

reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic language, and it is no different here: Gothic

proffers us a clear image of how the Proto-Indo-European numeric phrase

constructions under scrutiny have evolved in Germanic. Ains ‘one’, twai ‘two’ and

*þreis ‘three’ are fully declinable and are employed in CNPs; a plain innovation is

fidwor ‘four’, which has lost its inherited declension, just like Latin has, and is added

to the set of generally indeclinable CNs from fimf ‘five’ to *niuntaihun ‘nineteen’,

which occur in a JNP, unless they are positioned after the quantified noun phrase,

then requiring a CNP, e.g. wintriwē twalibē ‘winter-GEN.PL twelve-GEN.PL’ [Krahe,

1967: 85-87, 88; Krause, 1968: 189; Streitberg, 1906: 125]. In *twai tigjus ‘twenty’ to

*saihs tigjus ‘sixty’ the second lexeme, meaning ‘decade’ (< Proto-Indo-European

26 The data in Table 3 will be rendered according to this rather rigorous generalization for the sake of

simplicity.

*deḱús), is an inflected substantive and governs the genitive plural case in a GNP, just

like like CNs from hunda ‘hundred’ onwards; yet, sibuntēhund ‘seventy’ to

taihuntēhund ‘hundred’ are generally indeclinable substantives27, though one

example with declension is known, e.g. in niuntehundis jah niunē garaihtaizē ‘over

ninety-GEN.SG and nine-GEN.PL righteous ones-GEN.PL’ [Krahe, 1967: 89-91; Krause,

1968: 168; Streitberg, 1906: 126; WU Lu.15:7]. Other Old Germanic languages, such

as Old Saxon, Old English and Old Norse, basically display the same distribution,

although it is clear that the CNP becomes more productive due to a gradual status

shift of the indeclinable substantival substantives ‘seventy’ to ‘hundred’ to declinable

adjectives [Gallée, 1910: 233-235; Heusler, 1962: 85-87; Ross & Berns, 1992: 559;

Sievers, 1898: 171-175].

2.8 Balto-Slavonic

Of the Baltic branch, Modern Lithuanian is the most conservative language. However,

in its balanced redistribution of the Proto-Indo-European numeric phrase system it is

surprisingly innovative. The CNs víenas ‘one’ to devynì ‘nine’, i.e. all digits, are

declinable adjectives and display concord in a CNP if they are used as quantifiers

[Ambrazas, 1997: 167, 174-175; Dambriūnas, 1972: 184-185; Zinkevičius, 1996: 133-

134]:

(17) Pe sčias p dvieju nede li v s parsib st .

foot-NOM.SG / after / two-GEN.PL / week-GEN.PL / barely / wander-

PRET.REFL.3SG

“After two weeks, he barely wandered (home) on foot.” [BO 6]

All CNs from dẽ imt ‘ten’ onwards are declinable substantives which team up with the

quantified noun in the genitive plural, cf example (i) in footnote 3, however, when

27

As I explained in the introduction of this chapter, this would suggest that a JNP is used whenever the

genitive or dative case needs to be expressed. However, no such thing is discernable in the corpora.

they form multiword numerals with a digit as the final constituent, the digit becomes

the determining factor in the internal syntax of the numeric phrase, whereby a CNP

then replaces the standard GNP [Ambrazas, 1997: 166-167, 171; 175-176;

Dambriūnas, 1972: 185-186; Zinkevičius, 1996: 134-136]. Thus the imbalanced

system caused by the indeclinable status of the Proto-Indo-European CNs from ‘five’

to ‘nineteen’ has been replaced by a more transparent one in Modern Lithuanian, by

attaching adjectival case endings to the originally indeclinable CNs from ‘five’ to

‘nine’, and substantival case endings to the CNs from ‘ten’ to ‘nineteen’ [Comrie, 1992:

746-747].

The complexity of the Old Church Slavonic numeric phrase syntax is well matched

with that of Old Irish. Pretty straightforward are jedinъ ‘one’, dъva ‘two’, trije ‘three’

and četyre ‘four’, which are all declinable adjectives, capable of displaying full

concord for case, gender and number, and which logically appear in CNPs; dъva

requires a dual [Comrie, 1992: 725, 731, 738-739, 743; Nandriş, 1959: 120-122]. The

origin of the CNs from pętь ‘five’ to desętь ‘ten’, which are declinable substantives and

require a GNP, is disputed. The traditional view is that these are secondary numeral

substantives derived from the indeclinable adjectival numerals by means of the

proto-Indo-European suffix *ti-, cognate with Vedic Sanskrit paṅktí- ‘group of five’ to

daśatí- ‘group of ten’ and Old Norse fimt ‘group of five’ to tíund ‘group of ten’, among

others [Brugmann & Delbrück, 1911: 22-23; Dieter Stern, p.c.; Entwistle & Morison,

1969: 142-144; Meillet, 1906: 376]. Assuming this view would force us to exclude all

Old Church Slavonic numeric phrase constructions featuring CNs from pętь onwards:

Since the numeral substantives always govern the genitive plural case, this would

bias our account of the distribution of the CNP, JNP and GNP in the Indo-European

daughter languages. Yet, there are voices that contest this. For instance, Hirt [1927:

309-310] and Szemerényi [1960: 85-87] have pointed out that the so-called *ti-suffix

could also be the /t/ of déḱm t ‘ten’, extended to the CNs ‘five’, ‘six’ and ‘nine’ and

provided with the case endings of the i-declension (‘seven’ and ‘eight’ lack the /t/, but

do have the i-declension) , due to false analysis by the native speakers of Proto-Balto-

Slavonic, cf Comrie [1992: 746-748]. This latter view ties in well with my hypothesis

that the indeclinable status of the adjectival CNs from ‘five’ to ‘nineteen’ requiring a

GNP made these prone to status shift. As I demonstrated in the previous paragraph, in

Baltic (Modern Lithuanian), they were partly transformed into declinable adjectival

CNs (in a CNP) and partly into declinable substantival ones (in a GNP) to make the

system more stable. Old Church Slavonic apparently preferred the other way around,

by uniformly transforming them, i.e. pętь to desętь, in declinable substantival CNs.

The system for the teens, decades, hundreds (sьto, GNP) and thousands (tysę ti,

GNP) was reorganized in a way which is comparable with Old Irish, and it is

somewhat complicated. When combined with a decade, a hundred or a thousand, the

digit controls the case and number, thus jedinъ na desęte ‘one on ten-LOC.SG, i.e.

eleven’ requires a singular CNP, dъva na desęte ‘twelve’ a dual CNP, trije and četyre

na desęte ‘thirteen; fourteen’ a plural CNP, and pętь na desęte ‘fifteen’ to dъva desęti

‘two tens, i.e. twenty’ a GNP, after that, the process starts again [Andersen, 2006: 437-

438; Nandriş, 1959: 120-122].

2.9. Armenian

The numeral and numeric phrase system of Classical Armenian have gone through a

radical form of leveling, since all CNs have become declinable adjectives, which inflect

for case and number to some extent. Mi ‘one’, erku ‘two’, erek’ ‘three’ and č’ork’ ‘four’

are declined when preceding or following the quantified noun phrase, hing ‘five’ to

tasn ‘ten’ never inflect when they precede the noun phrase, but do inflect for the

genitive, dative, instrumental and ablative cases when they follow it, and finally all

CNs from metasan ‘eleven’ onwards display sporadic inflection if they follow the

quantified noun phrase [Ajello, 2006: 218; Meillet, 1913: 68-70; Winter, 1992g: 348-

353]. Thus Classical Armenian favors CNPs, with some fluctuations that have made

JNPs the second choice.

2.10. Albanian

If proto-Albanian ever inherited the Proto-Indo-European CNP/GNP distribution,

Modern Albanian has completely exchanged it for a monolithic system with nothing

but indeclinable CNs which exclusively require JNPs, even though it is an inflected

language. The only notable exception is tre ‘three’, which displays concord for the

masculine and the feminine gender [Newmark, 1982: 248-252; Pekmezi, 1908: 123-

125].

2.11 Discussion of the survey results

‘1’ to ‘4’ ‘5’ to ‘19’ ‘20’ to ‘99’ ‘100’ to

‘999’

‘1000’ ≥

Late Proto-Indo-

European

CNP JNP/GNP GNP GNP GNP

Hittite CNP / / / /

Vedic Sanskrit CNP CNP+/JNP/GNP CNP+/GNP CNP/GNP+ CNP/GNP+

Classical Sanskrit CNP CNP CNP+/GNP CNP+/GNP CNP+/GNP

Prakrit CNP CNP||GNP CNP+/GNP CNP+/GNP CNP+/GNP

Avestan CNP CNP? GNP GNP GNP

Greek CNP JNP JNP CNP||JNP CNP

Umbrian CNP CNP? / / /

Oscan CNP? / CNP? / /

Latin CNP||JNP JNP JNP CNP||JNP GNP/CNP+

Tocharian CNP JNP JNP JNP JNP

Old Irish CNP JNP GNP GNP GNP

Gothic CNP JNP+/CNP GNP JNP?/GNP GNP

Modern Lithuanian CNP CNP||GNP CNP||GNP CNP||GNP CNP||GNP

Old Church Slavonic CNP CNP||GNP CNP||GNP CNP||GNP CNP||GNP

Classical Armenian CNP CNP+/JNP CNP/JNP+ CNP/JNP+ CNP/JNP+

Modern Albanian JNP JNP JNP JNP JNP

Table 3 – Distribution of the Concordant, Genitival and Juxtapositional Numeric Phrases for all of

the examined languages according to the set of CNs they are generally associated with28.

That all examined languages, with the exception of Albanian, honor the association

between the CNP and the CNs from ‘one’ to ‘four’ immediately catches the eye. This

strengthens the assumption that the age-old embeddedness of the prime CNs in the

(pre-)Proto-Indo-European language has caused them to become intimately

associated with the adjectival class. Otherwise, the picture yielded by the survey

provides an interesting new line of approach to the traditional dialectal classification

of Indo-European. Pertaining to the development of the Proto-Indo-European

numeric phrase constructions, Greek, Italic, Tocharian and Armenian are clearly very

innovative, as they have more or less completely removed the GNP as a numeric

phrase construction possibility. Perhaps this is an indication that the use of the

genitive as an alternative for concord was not very successful in these languages

groups, causing the speakers of these languages to gradually implement a better

system. Tocharian is the most radical language on this point, but this must have

something to do with the drastic reorganization of its nominal case system it

experienced, i.e. from fusional-flectional to agglutinative, resulting in a massive

leveling process that completely ousted the CNP and GNP. I am cautious about stating

that Albanian was very innovative as well, since we hardly have any information

about its development. Moreover, the situation of Albanian is reflected in a lot of

modern Indo-European languages which have lost the rich inflectional system of their

ancestor language(s). Describing these would require a framework of its own. The

general conservative nature of ancient Indo-Iranian morphology and syntax is

corroborated by the relatively well retained numeric phase syntax. As I mentioned

above, Vedic Sanskrit most likely directly reflects the unstable situation of Late Proto-

28 Absence of data is marked by an isolated “/”. The “+”-symbol denotes that the numeric phrase is

more frequent than its counterpart. A “?” indicates that either more research is needed or very few

data is available. When two or more numeric phrase constructions are separated by a “||”, this

designates that each of them is associated with a different subset of the presented superset of CNs; in

this case the appropriate subchapters need to be consulted for a more detailed description.

Indo-European, procured by the indeclinable adjectival CNs, which were poorly

adapted to its versatile case system. That Celtic and Germanic have preserved the

original situation as well, may astonish, certainly if one would compare them with

their modern counterparts. Even though Baltic and Slavonic have applied opposite

strategies to change the status of the problematic indeclinable adjectival CNs from

‘five’ to ‘nineteen’, the final result supports their close-knittedness.

In having a CNP, a JNP and a GNP to count noun phrases, Indo-European would

seem to be an outsider from a typological point of view. However, this is not so.

Interestingly, Classical and Standard Modern Arabic share a similar situation.

Although the rules which hold for the construction of the Arabic numeric phrases are

somewhat complex, it basically boils down to the following observations. The CNs

wāḥid ‘one and ʾiṯnān ‘two’ are adjectives displaying full concord with the quantified

noun phrases [Lecomte, 1980: 78, 108; Rydin, 2005: 330, 332, 349]. The next set,

from ṯalāṯa ‘three’ to ʿa ara ‘ten’, is declinable for case, but only agrees for opposite

gender (a typical Semitic trait known as polarity) with the quantified noun phrase,

which takes the indefinite genitive plural case; ʿaḥada ʿa ara ‘eleven’ to tisʿata ʿa ara

‘nineteen’ are forms in a fossilized accusative singular case, with the exception of ʿiṯnā

ʿa ar ‘twelve’, which can be declined, and all of these require a determined noun

phrase to be in the accusative singular case, whilst gender agreement is organized as

the CNs ‘one’ to ‘nine’ [Lecomte, 1980: 78-80, 108-109; Rydin, 2005: 334, 340-341,

349]. From ʿi rūna ‘twenty’ onwards all CNs are declinable substantives, which team

up with the quantified noun phrase in the accusative singular case (up to tisʿata

tisʿūna ‘ninety-nine’) or the genitive singular case (from miʿa ‘hundred’ onwards)

[Lecomte, 1980: 80, 109; Rydin, 2005: 343, 346, 349]. Similar constructions are also

encountered in some dialects of the most ancient known Semitic language, Akkadian,

e.g. ḫam at bēlī ‘five-CONSTR lord-GEN.SG’ or even ḫam at bēlīm ‘five-CONSTR lord-

GEN.PL’[Caplice, 2002: 77]. Whether this resemblance with the Indo-European

situation has any typological implications, and whether there are other languages that

possess similar patterns, is a matter for future research.

3. Conclusion

To think that the survey offered in this article has permanently answered the major

questions concerning the origin, the nature and the evolution of the Indo-European

Concordant, Juxtapositional and Genitival Numeric Phrases, would be to show

inappropriate overconfidence. As always, a lot of questions pertaining to form and

meaning remain. Some of the gaps in the research were already suggested in the

previous chapters. For instance, a profound research of the semantics of the GNP’s

genitive could shed light as to why it was utilized as an alternative for concord, and,

more importantly, why it eventually failed and was ousted in some languages. I

presume one will have to inquire into the nature of the Indo-European pseudo-

partitive construction when one researches the genitive, which would also offer the

opportunity to study the differences and correspondences between the GNP, the

pseudo-partitive and the partitive construction. Yet, I hope to have at least set the

stage for more thorough and specialized inquiries into these very problems in the

future. Naturally, an extensive set of corpus studies for each of the ancient Indo-

European languages would indubitably refine the survey results displayed by Table 3.

This includes inquiries into the diachronic development from ancient phases of a

language group to its modern counterparts. In this respect, the study of the numeric

phrase constructions in the North-East Iranian Ossetic language, spoken in the

Caucasus, would yield interesting results, as the speakers of this language seem to

have chosen the GNP as the main numeric phrase construction. Finally, typological

ambitions should not be neglected: One of the aims of this articles was to contribute

to a broader field of numeric phrase typology.

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4.2. Corpora

Apart from examples cited from the literature, the following electronic corpora were

used to gather additional data:

Gothic: “Wulfila Project. Gothic Bible and minor fragments”. http://www.wulfila.be/gothic/. 12/08/2011. [WU] Lithuanian: Vasiliauskiene, Virginija, Baltic Online, <http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/eieol/litol-0-X.html>. 10/08/2011. [BO] Old Irish: de Bernardo Stempel, Patrizia & Slocum, Jonathan, Old Irish Online, http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/eieol/iriol-0-X.html. 03/08/2011. [OI]

Tocharian: Krause, Todd B. & Slocum, Jonathan, Tocharian Online, http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/eieol/tokol-0-X.html. 04/08/2011. [TO] Vedic Sanskrit: “Rigveda in Sanskrit und Deutsch”. http://www.sanskritweb.net/rigveda/rigveda.pdf. 30/07/2011. [RV]