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).
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.”
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.”