Etymology of basic numerals (number words)

Question

When speakers of a language coin words for one, two, three, four, etc., for the first time, where do they come up with the forms? Are there any common methods used across language families?

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Pirahã has words for "few" and "many". Numerous other languages have only "one" and "many", possibly adding "two", especially among isolated hunter-gatherer tribes. If they do express numbers higher than that, it's by counting on their fingers in front of someone else. (See chapters 1 and 2 of The Number Concept, written by Levi Leonhard Conant in 1896.) But once people invent agriculture and trade, languages tend to come to have some system for counting and expressing, say, the number of animals in a flock or the number of days' travel to some other village.

If you can get past the use of "savage" and "rude" to refer to hunter-gatherers and "Aryan" for Indo-European, Conant continues to describe a common strategy for "five" through "ten". The word five is often some variant on "having finished one hand"; this is true of PIE as well where *pénkʷe (five) is related to "finger". Ten can be "having finished both hands" or (in the case of shod cultures) "one man", and six through nine "one more [than five]" through "four more"; nine is just as often "one less [than ten]". Barefoot cultures often adopt base 20 ("one man") with sub-base 5.

Some languages borrow numbers when their speakers borrow other cultural concepts. For example, most European languages borrowed "zero" from Arabic, and Swahili appears to have borrowed six through ten from the same language. Proponents of the Nostratic hypothesis will cite similarity between "six" and "seven" in IE and Semitic as evidence of common descent, if those words weren't also borrowed.

Conant lamented that the names of one through four appeared opaque in the vast majority of languages studied. Have the past 120 years produced any more clarity on trends in number word etymology among several language families? I tried Google basic numbers etymology but most results appeared irrelevant, most simply tracing English back to PIE or reiterating that zero was borrowed from Arabic.

Answer 1

Piotr Gąsiorowski has very recently put forth a hypothesis on the origin of Indo-European kwetwor "four."

'Four: A Map'

He argues that it comes from an archaic word for "pair" or "to pair." The semantic evidence is good; unfortunately, there are not many branches with a non-"four" reflex of kwet in them.

Answer 2

This is a common cross-linguistic trend. I remember reading a section of a book about it - in fact, I was searching for that book when I found this thread - but alas, I can't seem to find it.

As a non-Indo-European example, Yu'pik does something similar, but a little more thorough. Very roughly:

1. "that which is indivisible"
2. "following unit"
3. "addendum"
4. "spread out"
5. "arm"
6. "one having crossed over"
7. "one having two" (?)
8. "one having three" (?)
9. "not quite ten"
10. "above"
11. "it goes down"
12. "ten two"
13. "ten three"
14. "not quite fifteen"
15. "other side"
16. "fifteen one"
17. "fifteen two"
18. "fifteen three"
19. "not quite twenty"
20. "whole person"

When a number is used in the gloss, obviously, it can be broken down to its own constituents, so 12 is "following unit above", etc. The only exception is that the "one" in 6-8 is a pronoun, similar to "something".

http://www.languagesandnumbers.com/how-to-count-in-yupik/en/ypk-esu/ (this source translates 7 and 8 as "two having crossed over" and "three having crossed over", but this appears to be in error) https://books.google.ca/books?isbn=311027857X (pp. 398-401)

Answer 3

I find it interesting that Indo-European numerals from 1 to 4 are declinable and have ablaut nature; meanwhile numerals 5 and higher are indeclinable "stumps". The only explanation is that numerals 5 and higher were used in simple sequantial counting: 5, 6, 7, 8, perhaps in trade with non-Indo-European tribes. *septm being an obvious borrowing suggests that all the numerals from 5 to 10 could be loanwords from some sort of ancient pidgin, and Indo-Europeans themselves casually counted only up to 4.

Answer 4

If one puts oneself into the situation of an early age where the invention of words for numbers begins there is only one way to do it, by paraphrasing. You can express five by saying as many as fingers on your hand. Two: the number of your arms or feet, etc. Four: the legs of a cow or a dog One: the head of a man or head/tail of an animal

If signs and geometrical signs have been developed it is possible to say: Three: the corners of a triangle Four: the corners of a rectangle or square. Latin quattuor (four) is very similar to quadratum (rectangle) or quadrus/a/um (rectangular).

If words for one, two, three have been developed it is easy to express more numbers: Ten: two hands - Behind Latin decem (ten) might be two hands. Seven: a hand + two. Nine: two hands minus one. Eight: two fours.

The further development of paraphrases will be shortening and contraction till a word form that is short and easy to speak comes into being.

Probably the first stage was by means of gestures, such as showing the hand, pointing to the nose or to the legs. Maybe conventions developed for addition and subtraction of two simple numbers.