| 6. NUMERALS |
Numerals are asub-class of nouns since they all carry gender-number category (ondi a: ‘one woman’; oro:war ma:ne: ‘one man’; ren· a:sk ‘two women’; iruwir ma:ne:r ‘two men’, etc.) and are inflected for case (ma: iruwir-kun ‘to two of us’; mu:wir-kun ‘to three people’, etc.). Numerals are of two kinds: cardinal numerals and ordinal numerals.
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| 6.1. Cardinal Numerals |
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Cardinal numerals are divided into three:
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(1) Simple or basic numerals: Abujhmaria has native numerals from 1 to 6. Numerals for numbers from 7 onwards are loan words from Indo-Aryan.
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ond (i:) |
‘one’ |
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ren (u:) |
‘two’ |
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mu:n(u:) |
‘three’ |
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na:lu |
‘four’ |
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(h)ay |
‘five’ |
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(h)a:ru |
‘six’ |
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(2) Complex numerals are those which have two stems. For example, ki:i: me:n ond ‘twentyone’; ko:·i: me:n (h)a:ru´ ‘twentysix’, etc.
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(3) Numeral constructions where numbers are expressed by phrases.
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mu:n ko:i: naw |
‘sixtynine’ |
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na:lu ko:i: (h)ay |
‘eightyfive’ |
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6.1.1. All simple numerals denote the non-masculine and are used both as nouns in the nominative and as attributes to a following head noun. The numerals from one to six have bound adjective variants which occur before certain, masculine derivative suffixes to form morphological complexes, meaning ‘one man’, ‘two men’, etc. Numerals from seven onwards occur without change in the shape before classifiers.
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Simple numerals
(Non-masculine) |
Numerals adjectives occurring before masculine suffixes (Masculine) |
| ond (i:) |
‘one’ |
oro:r ~ |
oro:war |
‘one man’ |
| ren(u:) |
‘two’ |
iruwir |
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‘two men’ |
| mu:n(u:) |
‘three’ |
mu:wir |
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‘three men’ |
| na:lu |
‘four’ |
na:lwir |
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‘four men’ |
| (h)ay |
‘five’ |
(h)aywir |
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‘five men’ |
| (h)a:ru |
‘six’ |
(h)a:rwir |
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‘six men’ |
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