Universal #704
Legacy number: 704
| Number | 701 |
| Original | In most languages the base number is put before the unit, and in general a higher number before a lower, when they are conjoined. |
| Standardized | The base number tends to be put before the unit, and in general a higher number before a lower, when they are conjoined. |
| Keywords | numeral |
| Domain | word formation |
| Type | unconditional |
| Status | achronic |
| Quality | statistical |
| Basis | languages mentioned in Stampe 1976 |
| Source | Stampe 1976: 602, Greenberg 1978a: 274 |
Discussion
Counterexamples
Teens in English (fourteen), the teens and decades in German (vierzehn (14), vierundzwanzig (24)), Sanskrit (trayo-dasa), Latin (tre-decim), Irish (tri-deec), all meaning 13 (mentioned in Stampe 1976);Malagasy (Barito, Western Malayo-Polynesian), Classical Arabic (Semitic, Afro-Asiatic), Timucua (unaffiliated, an extinct language of Florida) (mentioned in Greenberg 1978a: 274, 275).
Notes
1. Stampe accounts for his hypothesis thus: “... the lower numbers are the new material, and therefore they are ordered later – at the climax, as it were, of the whole number”.2. In languages like Sanskrit, Latin, German, Irish, compounds have their accent fixed on the first constituent. Stampe explains the counterexamples thus: “the lower number is put first in these compounds to keep it under the accent.” See his comments (Stampe 1976: 608, fn. 7) on lower-higher conjuncts in which the second element is accented. 3. Greenberg 1978a: 274: “Languages in which for all numerals formed by addition, the larger precedes the smaller are extremely common. Those in which the opposite holds are extremely rare. ... There is thus a world wide favouring of the word order larger + smaller.”
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2. In languages like Sanskrit, Latin, German, Irish, compounds have their accent fixed on the first constituent. Stampe explains the counterexamples thus: "the lower number is put first in these compounds to keep it under the accent." See his comments (Stampe 1976: 608, fn. 7) on lower-higher conjuncts in which the second element is accented.
3. Greenberg 1978a: 274: "Languages in which for all numerals formed by addition, the larger precedes the smaller are extremely common. Those in which the opposite holds are extremely rare. ... There is thus a world wide favouring of the word order larger + smaller."