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Dennis
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Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 10:15 am Post subject: Re: Relationship between "a/an" and "one"

kuasi wrote: yes, you're right that the roman numeral system has no zero but that the arabic numeral does have one. but just because what you wrote doesn't have a zero, that doesn't mean that it's automatically roman. --- let me make what i'm trying to say very clear here. what you wrote out was the arabic numeral system with a ten in place of the zero. You asked for the ten primary numbers, and I gave them to you. You did not ask for the ten primary symbols, using Roman numerals, and so I did not give them to you. The fact that I used Arabic numerals, our modern system, to identify the symbols in question should not mean to you that I am identifying them as the REPRESENTATION of the Roman numerals. It seems that you are confused. I assumed that you are aware of the method of representation of Roman numerals, and to use them in order to describe what they symbolize adds no educational value. Meanwhile, you seem to be stuck on a trivial point that I skirted by to get to what I consider the real point. You are correct that these symbols are automatically Roman because they do not contain a zero, but they are Roman once we consider their context, which of course includes the fact that they do not contain a zero. Perhaps in your quick reading of the old post, you became confused as to what the real point of this topic is, and we are not discussing the same point. You seem to be stuck on how we write Roman numerals, whereas I am interested in what the symbols symbolize.

Corybobory
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Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 10:54 am Post subject:

Bicker bicker bicker. No wonder only two people are joining in on this thread. _________________ BA Linguistics, Simon Fraser University MSc Palaeoanthropology and Palaeolithic Archaeology, University College London "No conceit could be worse than a belief in one's own intrinsic objectivity, no prescription more suited to the exposure of fools."

Dennis
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Joined: 30 Aug 2009
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Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 11:25 am Post subject:

Corybobory wrote: Bicker bicker bicker. No wonder only two people are joining in on this thread. You seem to have proven yourself wrong.

Corybobory
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Joined: 21 Sep 2007
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Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 11:31 am Post subject:

I wasn't joining in, I was commenting. _________________ BA Linguistics, Simon Fraser University MSc Palaeoanthropology and Palaeolithic Archaeology, University College London "No conceit could be worse than a belief in one's own intrinsic objectivity, no prescription more suited to the exposure of fools."

Dennis
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Joined: 30 Aug 2009
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Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 11:38 am Post subject:

Corybobory wrote: I wasn't joining in, I was commenting. Like there is a difference here. I rest my case.

kuasi
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Joined: 24 Oct 2009
Posts: 206
Location: Lauderdale/Seattle

Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 3:12 pm Post subject:

Corybobory wrote: Bicker bicker bicker. No wonder only two people are joining in on this thread. you're right. ---- i mean,,, in fairness, this thread has existed for months and no one commented on it during that whole time, but the continuation of such an absurd topic probably isn't going to help any to attract new people. i would be interested to hear some comments on the original post though. does it seem reasonable to anyone else that the word "one" is based on the word indefinite article rather than the other way around? --- can anyone offer any examples that support this idea or refute it in anyway?

Corybobory
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Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 4:10 pm Post subject:

I would think that the article being based on the number is more intuitive- I mean, how many languages are without articles vs. languages without number systems. _________________ BA Linguistics, Simon Fraser University MSc Palaeoanthropology and Palaeolithic Archaeology, University College London "No conceit could be worse than a belief in one's own intrinsic objectivity, no prescription more suited to the exposure of fools."

kuasi
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Joined: 24 Oct 2009
Posts: 206
Location: Lauderdale/Seattle

Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 9:33 pm Post subject:

Corybobory wrote: I would think that the article being based on the number is more intuitive- I mean, how many languages are without articles vs. languages without number systems. thanks for commenting, cory. you're right that numerals are quite common in languages whereas indefinite articles are actually rather rare, but should that be taken as an indication that numerals are older than indefinite articles? it might very well be the case, but it would seem to me that indefiniteness in general is actually very old and is probably in every languages (at least in words like "someone" and "something"). still though,,, indefinite articles are rare, and maybe that means that they're a recent innovation., in which case, i still don't see the connection between one-ness and indefiniteness. it might just be though that i'm looking at it all wrong. there might be bizarre psychological (rather than sensible) reasons for why indefinite articles would form from the number for "one". it might simply be that speakers of languages where nouns come with modifiers get into the habit of having something accompany the noun. and so "dogs" is ok (because of the "s"), and "the dog", "this dog", "my dog", "any dog", etc, are all ok because they come accompanied with determiners, but "dog" is too naked, and so speakers feel compelled to put some extra word there, and "one" is the only one that fits.

Corybobory
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Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 10:06 am Post subject:

I dont think we can take any information about frequency and deduce which feature is older in language- that is much too speculative for my comfort. Languages change and features enter and exit the language which makes this very difficult. However, when hypothesising about one feature creating another, such as with the numeral 'one' and indefinite pronouns, I think we can say a few things. Numerals denote quite a useful concept, compared to indefinite articles, which as we can see in many languages, are not always necessary to make an idea clear. In languages without an indefinite article, they will often use the numeral to be more specific. If we said the word for 'one' often or always came form the word for "a/an", are we saying the lexical item only, or the actual numerical concept? Because I'd argue the concept of 'one' is much more basic than an article, which is quite dispensable to a language- and then, in order for the concept of numeracy to have arisen, a language would first have to evolve definite/indefiniteness. This all sounds pretty unlikely. If we're just talking about the indefinite article influencing the lexical item for the word one, as in perhaps replacing an older word for something resembling the indefinite article, why not. I think since numerals are nearly universal, and articles definitly are not, we could probably assume that it is the numeral influencing the word used to describe indefiniteness. There is also a relationship between demonstratives and definite articles, where demonstratives exist in languages without articles... I'd highly doubt we'd find the reverse example! Grammaticalisation is the name of the concept we're describing, by the way, where a word becomes a grammatical item in a language. We could probably search for a lot of literature on this... I read a book talking about Grammaticalisation and language evolution by Heine and Kuteva (2007 or 2008 I think?). I used it in my dissertation to lend support for likely steps in the evolution of language! I bet work on creolisation might be useful as well. _________________ BA Linguistics, Simon Fraser University MSc Palaeoanthropology and Palaeolithic Archaeology, University College London "No conceit could be worse than a belief in one's own intrinsic objectivity, no prescription more suited to the exposure of fools."

kuasi
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Joined: 24 Oct 2009
Posts: 206
Location: Lauderdale/Seattle

Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 5:47 pm
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just to clarify my position,,,

Corybobory wrote: If we said the word for 'one' often or always came form the word for "a/an", are we saying the lexical item only, or the actual numerical concept? Because I'd argue the concept of 'one' is much more basic than an article, which is quite dispensable to a language- and then, in order for the concept of numeracy to have arisen, a language would first have to evolve definite/indefiniteness. This all sounds pretty unlikely.

well, i'm certainly not trying to argue that the word for "one" always comes from indefinite articles. since most languages with numerals don't even have indefinite articles, their words for "one" would of course had to have come from somewhere else. --- and i am certainly not arguing that indefiniteness must first arise before numeracy can.

as for which of the two (indefiniteness vs. numeracy) is more basic to language, i can't even begin to guess. all languages (i think) make distinctions between definiteness and indefiniteness, just not on the level of common nouns (for example, "a book" vs "the book"). but they DO make the distinction in pronouns (for example, "it" vs. "something" or "he/she" vs. "somebody/someone"). ---- in fact, while it wouldn't really verify anything one way or the other, i'd be interested to find out if there are any languages lacking an indefinite article whose word for "one" closely resembles their word for "something" (or any other indefinite pronoun, such as "somewhere").

Corybobory wrote: If we're just talking about the indefinite article influencing the lexical item for the word one, as in perhaps replacing an older word for something resembling the indefinite article, why not.

yes, this is more along the lines of what i'm talking about, although i don't know that such languages would have necessarily had a previous word for "one" that would later end up being replaced. if a language has only a two-way distinction (for example, 1 vs. 2 or higher), then it is not necessary that each word actually be overt. there could simply be a word meaning "two or higher" and the lack of any such word could then automatically imply singularity., much in the way that the singular and plural endings work in english (and indeed, such endings might be remnants of such a system).

and really, it doesn't even need to be confined only to two-way number systems. a languages that distinguishes between 1, 2, 3, 4, and "5 or higher", could just as easily get by with only four words, even though there are five different numerals. --- it might be then, the words for "one" only arose for the purposes of counting (not just distinguishing different amounts, but actual counting, as is done in commerce). and what i'm proposing (as a possibility) is that at that point, the indefinite article would have been a pretty useful word to take the place of that blank spot.

ultimately though,,, my only point is that it cannot be denied that there is a connection between indefinite articles and words for "one", but that we needn't assume that the word for "one" must automatically be the source for indefinite articles, when it's also possible that the reverse could have been the case. (and i've provided reason for why it might make more sense to think that the reverse is more likely, but this of course not a position i hold firmly, but more than anything, just something to consider as a possibility).

Corybobory wrote: I dont think we can take any information about frequency and deduce which feature is older in language- that is much too speculative for my comfort. Languages change and features enter and exit the language which makes this very difficult.

i agree. i only expounded on that because i thought that that was the angle that you were kinda tackling this question from.

Corybobory wrote: Numerals denote quite a useful concept, compared to indefinite articles, which as we can see in many languages, are not always necessary to make an idea clear.

i can probably just go ahead and agree that numerals are more useful than indefinite pronouns, since languages are clearly able to function just fine with indefinite article but the same cannot be said for numerals (though, we don't know what exactly languages would have "required" tens of thousands of years ago, when indefinite articles might still have been only slightly useful for nuance, but numerals were close to pointless).

another thing to keep in mind is that it's not so easy to talk about which features are "necessary to make an idea clear". i mean,,, some features seem like they'd render a language useless if they were removed (for example,,, first person pronouns/markers), but one could argue that ALL features are pretty much just luxuries.

of course,,, speakers of languages (excluding linguists) usually don't view features of their own language as luxurious and unnecessary. something like evidentials probably seem pretty essential to speakers who are used to using them, and even i, despite not speaking a language equipped with evidentials, can see the value in them. and perhaps the only reason why so many languages lack such a feature is not simply because they're not "necessary to make an idea clear", but rather that a language like english, what all with how many people are constantly adopting it as a second language, cannot afford them., and so is being kept in a constant state of near "pidgin-hood". or more specifically (and plausibly), it might just be that languages require tens of thousands of years to build up such nuanced and complex features, and since english comes from such a long line of conquering/conquered languages, it's lost many of these features and hasn't had the time since to rebuild them.

so, my point to all this is that, for all we know,,, indefinite articles might have been much more widespread and seemingly intrinsic to languages 20,000 years ago or so.

Corybobory wrote: In languages without an indefinite article, they will often use the numeral to be more specific.

i don't follow. how so? and what languages do you know of that do this? (and perhaps more importantly, if they're using a numeral as a sort of article (provided that that's even what you're saying), then why consider those languages as not having an indefinite article?)

Corybobory wrote: There is also a relationship between demonstratives and definite articles, where demonstratives exist in languages without articles... I'd highly doubt we'd find the reverse example!

well, i'm really not trying to argue that words like "that" form from words like "the" (though it's of course possible). and you're right that all languages with words for "the" also have words for "that" (whereas the reverse is not true), but that's really not saying much since all language (i think) have words for "that". in any case,,, i'm really not trying to argue anything in regards to definite articles. just because definite articles and indefinite articles can both be said to be "articles", that doesn't mean that processes leading up to how such article arise is the same between different types of articles.

Corybobory wrote: Grammaticalisation is the name of the concept we're describing, by the way, where a word becomes a grammatical item in a language. We could probably search for a lot of literature on this... I read a book talking about Grammaticalisation and language evolution by Heine and Kuteva (2007 or 2008 I think?). I used it in my dissertation to lend support for likely steps in the evolution of language! I bet work on creolisation might be useful as well.

the concept of grammaticalization relies heavily on the idea that certain types of words are "content words" whereas other types of word are "function words", and i see no reason to consider a word like "one" has having any more content (and certainly not any less grammatical function) than a word like "a/an". ---- this isn't to say that these terms aren't useful. there definitely seems to be a pattern in how pidgins develop into creoles, and i'm happy to learn about any research that's been done (specifically in regards to this topic of indefinite articles and the word for "one"). but as for grouping words into one of the above two categories, it seems, to me, just overly simplistic and probably largely very inaccurate. (and it's one of those things that i'd imagine all of the details of which begin to fall apart the moment they're compared to non-european languages.)

Corybobory
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Joined: 21 Sep 2007
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Posted: Wed Mar 10, 2010 2:03 am Post subject:

The language I was thinking of was Japanese, and I'm guessing Mandarin would be similar (Yi ge [noun]...). These are the only two languages without indefinite articles I know enough to form a sentence with: Japanese: 1) Hon -o kaita. Book object buy(past) (I) bought a book/(I) bought the book/(I) bought books 2) Hon o hitotsu o kaita. Book object one object buy(past) I bought one book. *I know there is another way to express this sentence using the counter system for books but I'm rubbish with counters! _________________ BA Linguistics, Simon Fraser University MSc Palaeoanthropology and Palaeolithic Archaeology, University College London "No conceit could be worse than a belief in one's own intrinsic objectivity, no prescription more suited to the exposure of fools."

kuasi
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Joined: 24 Oct 2009
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Location: Lauderdale/Seattle

Posted: Wed Mar 10, 2010 3:32 am Post subject:

Corybobory wrote: The language I was thinking of was Japanese, and I'm guessing Mandarin would be similar (Yi ge [noun]...). These are the only two languages without indefinite articles I know enough to form a sentence with: Japanese: 1) Hon -o kaita. Book object buy(past) (I) bought a book/(I) bought the book/(I) bought books 2) Hon o hitotsu o kaita. Book object one object buy(past) I bought one book. I know there is another way to express this sentence using the counter system for books but I'm rubbish with counters! oh, i see. but can that still mean both (by which i mean "either") "i bought a book" or "i bought the one* book"? including the word "one" will certainly restrict the grammatical number of the book, but does it have an effect on the definiteness? japanese uses topic markers, and my understanding (though maybe i'm just misremembering something i read) is that languages will either have topic-marking or definiteness-marking, but usually not both. i don't know., does that even make sense? topic and definiteness seem like such different things to me. also,, what are counters? is that the same as classifiers? or are they some other feature?

Corybobory
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Posted: Wed Mar 10, 2010 5:06 am Post subject:

I guess you are right- it still could be considered 'indefinite' by context. But that is the thing, it is determined by context, and I don't think situations would arise where there are miscommunications. If it's important, you just give more detail. This made me think of languages where the phrase will included a morpheme that denotes whether or not the object being spoken about can be seen by the speaker or not. Other languages that do not have this get along just fine- I think definite/indefiniteness carries a similar role of importance. Yes, counters are like classifiers... Japanese has a number of different ways of counting things. Ordinal numbers are different from numbers you count objects that are flat, vs objects that are long and thin, vs. people vs. animals etc. In the above examples I used a generic system that can be used to count a number of things. _________________ BA Linguistics, Simon Fraser University MSc Palaeoanthropology and Palaeolithic Archaeology, University College London "No conceit could be worse than a belief in one's own intrinsic objectivity, no prescription more suited to the exposure of fools."

kuasi
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Joined: 24 Oct 2009
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Posted: Fri Mar 12, 2010 2:25 pm Post subject:

Corybobory wrote: This made me think of languages where the phrase will included a morpheme that denotes whether or not the object being spoken about can be seen by the speaker or not. Other languages that do not have this get along just fine- I think definite/indefiniteness carries a similar role of importance. yeah,, the example you give is probably pretty comparable. definiteness (which is to say, letting the listener know whether or not a thing being discussed is something they know of) is probably about as luxurious/useful as a feature that allows them to know if the thing being discussed is something that can be seen (and keep in mind that the words "this" and "that" sorta accomplish this in english, and i don't know that anyone would ever call such distinctions luxurious or unnecessary). still though, i have trouble understanding what it means for a language to be able to "get along just fine". i think it could be argued that any feature from a language could be removed, and the language would still go on being spoken. something to keep in mind though is that in many of these cases, such features are not optional, but obligatory. in a language with evidentials, for example, it's not that the speaker has the option to tack on some little ending and express how they know something, but rather that they're required to, regardless of whether or not they want to (sorta like how in english we don't have the option to leave off tense when using a finite verb). and i think this is telling of something., which is that the listener is the only one benefiting from such features and that then maybe they are sorta "necessary". just because some languages don't have them, and those languages still go on being spoken, i don't think that's really enough to be able to label them as "unnecessary". i mean,,, just do a little thought experiment. imagine depriving a language of a feature that you do consider necessary (whatever feature that might be - in fact,, what exactly would you consider a necessary feature? i'd be curious to know). now,,, just because that feature has been removed, is the language going to fall apart and stop being spoken?, or fail to "get along fine"? even pidgins (which can probably certainly be shown to be lacking "necessary" features (if any features can be described as necessary), since they are immediately creolized by the first generation of children that comes along) don't cease to be spoken. so can it be said that they get along just fine too? this is my point (or at least,, the point i'm struggling to make - forgive me if this is kinda muddled, as i'm trying to figure it out as i go along)., that a language will continue to exist no matter which features are removed., and so it can be argued that all features are luxurious. but isn't that the point of language anyway?, to strive to communicate more? and don't features like indefinite articles, evidentials, and the markers you mentioned do just that? --- this is really neither here nor there as far as our discussion goes. i realize that you only brought this stuff up to argue the point that numerals are more basic to language than indefinite articles (which, you might be right), but still,,, this was a point i felt was worth making (though i apologize if it's kinda off-topic).

Altrius

Joined: 16 Mar 2010
Posts: 7

Posted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 4:12 pm Post subject:

I'm new to this forum so sorry if I'm intruding at all. I've always correlated the indefinite article not with the numerical one (1) but with the indefinite pronoun one (e.g. If one sees a ghost he may scream.) The indefinite pronoun (in English) is said to have evolved from the French indefinite pronoun (on) which is a shortened version of the word homme (man) which in turn came from Latin homo (man). In this case, the indefinite article has nothing to do with "one-ness" but has everything to do with indefiniteness. I tried for years to figure out what the indefinite article had to do with the number one until I realised that the number one and the indefinite pronoun one are false cognates. In my own research I have found that the number one comes from a Germanic root while the indefinite pronoun one comes from a Romance root.

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