Monday, September 4, 2017

Detail #354: Complete Omission of some low Numerals

Consider a language in which the use of a singular pretty much implies exactly one, and never a 'generic' referent. In such a language, the number 'one' could be entirely omitted in favour of always using a noun instead, much like how Russian sometimes uses 'raz' ('a time, one time') instead of 'odin'.

Now, in such a language, one can imagine that mathematical notation would not develop very well, since the idea of a symbol for 'one' might be less obvious if there's no word for it.

If the language also has explicit duals, we could even consider dropping 'two' out of it as well.

EDIT: This post was renumbered due to previous omission of #354.

No comments:

Post a Comment