Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Ŋʒädär: Numbers

The Ŋʒädär numbers are as follows:
1 ȝere
2 möre
3 söčö
4 nuro
5 mɯgɤ
6 k'oro
7 na͜ɤgɤ
8 äembä
9 weʒerx

10 t'ostaŋ
11 ȝerelen
12 merelen
13 t'össöčö
14 t'osnuro
15 t'osmɯgɤ

18 t'ösämbä
19 t'esweʒerx
An exceptional set of numbers that appear are these:
16 möräm
17 mörȝere

24 söčäm
25 söčȝere
Bigger numbers are formed using -t[o|e|ö|ɤ]l after the number root: söčtöl, "thirty", k'ortol, "fifty". Hundred is tVtVl, where V follows the same harmony pattern as in -tVl. Thousand has a name of its own, k'[a|ä|e]mr[a|e]; ten thousand is formed by reduplication: k'V1mkV2mrV2, where V2 is [a|e], and V1 is [a|ä|e]. The default harmony is ä-e-e.

Larger units of counting are generally not known by most speakers, although the adjective p'acro 'large' combined with kämre and kämkemre is used among philosophers and scribes to form 100,000 and a million.

Congruence

Inaninimate nouns do not take plural marking when quantified by a number - you would say 'seven house', not 'seven houses'. However, animate nouns do take plural marking. In the absolutive, there's further a congruence detail going on for animates: each number, even each part of a larger number, is marked for plural (with the nominative plural morphology), obtaining things like:
naɤgɤ rügvä
seven houses

na
ɤgɤ rügväŋä
seven house-loc
in seven house(s)

na
͜ɤgar iqest'er
seven-plur man-plur


na͜ɤgɤ iqest'inye
seven man-plur.at
at seven men

In other cases, however, only the main noun takes any case marker. (As for congruence, only non-numeral determiners take case and number congruence.)

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