Thursday, September 24, 2015

Detail #211: Numbers with Rhythm and Metre

It seems to me to be pretty likely that some languages might have a very strong idea of numbers forming a very rhythmic and potentially rhyming structure. (Note: rhyme need not be the main repeating thing - it might be alliteration or any kind of phonological similarity combined with some type of rhythmic structure, really). Basically, you'd expect this to happen in some culture where counting is almost always done out loud, and where numbers seldom are used in any more abstract sense.


However, sound changes wear down the rhythmic structure, and undo the rhymes – however, due to the sprachbund having that thing for such structures, the number systems tend to be reshaped so as to replace the old, lost structure with a new structure. This means numbers change faster than other lexemes, as they are reshaped to create some kind of regular, appealing rhythmic flow and rhyme where it has been lost - and not necessarily with the same flow and rhyme as previously; new rhymes, new rhythmic patterns keep emerging.

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