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Proto-Amerind Numerals

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Anthropol. Sci. 103(3), 209-225, 1995 Proto-Amerind Numerals MERRITT RUHLEN 4335 Cesano Court, Palo Alto, CA 94306, U.S.A. Received December 5, 1995 •ôGH•ô Abstract•ôGS•ô The Amerind language family includes all the aboriginal languages of North and South America, except for those belonging to the Eskimo-Aleut and Na- Dene families. Comparative linguistic evidence from extant (or attested) Amerind languages indicates that Proto-Amerind-the language from which all Amerind languages derive-used a system of counting in which an obligatory numeral prefix, •ôUH•ô*•ôUS•ô•ôNH•ône•ôNS•ô-,preceded the numeral root. The first three numerals in Proto-Amerind seem to have been •ôUH•ô*•ôUS•ô•ôNH•ône•ôNS•ô-•ôNH•ôk'•ôUH•ôw•ôUS•ôe•ôNS•ô`1,' •ôUH•ô*•ôUS•ô•ôNH•ône-pale•ôNS•ô`2,' and •ôUH•ô*•ôUS•ô•ôNH•ône-q•ôUH•ôw•ôUS•ôalas•ôNS•ô `3.' A fourth numeral, Proto-Amerind •ôUH•ô*•ôUS•ô•ôNH•ôta-pale•ôNS•ô`4,' combined a reflexive prefix with the Proto- Amerind root for `2' in order to express the number `4.' •ôGH•ô Key Words•ôNS•ô: anthropological linguistics, Amerind languages, numerals INTRODUCTION The Amerind language family, as defined by Joseph Greenberg (1987), includes all the indigenous languages of the Americas, with the exception of those belonging to the Eskimo-Aleut and Na-Dene families1. The Eskimo-Aleut family consists of what are essentially two languages, spread across the northern periphery of North America from Alaska to Greenland. The Na-Dene family consists of four branches, three of which-Haida, Tlingit, and Eyak-are single languages. The fourth branch is the Athabaskan family, consisting of several dozen very similar languages, which are found in interior Alaska and northwestern Canada, with outliers in Oregon, on the northern California coast, and in the American southwest (Navajo, Apache). All of the remaining Native American languages, which probably numbered between one and two thousand at the time of the arrival of Columbus, belong to the Amerind family. Though the antiquity of Proto-Amerind-the language from which all extant or attested Amerind languages derive-cannot be established on linguistic grounds by any currently known method, the archaeological record in the New World strongly suggests that the Americas were uninhabited by humans until 12,000- 11,000 years ago, at which time both North and South America were quickly populated (Klein,1989, pp. 389-92). If we may identify the first immigrants to the Americas with the Amerind language family, which seems plausible based on the distribution of Amerind languages, then the age of Proto-Amerind would be approximately 11,000 years old. In the present article I would like to offer a preliminary analysis of the Proto- 1 This study is dedicated to the founder of Amerind linguistics, Joseph H. Greenberg, on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, May 28, 1995. 210 M. RUHLEN Amerind numeral system. Although few contemporary languages have preserved the system itself-the Algonquian family is an exception-many Amerind languages of both North and South America have preserved fossilized relics of the Proto- Amerind system. Furthermore, it will be shown that certain family-specific prob lems,which have remained either unexplained, or, worse, incorrectly explained, are easily resolved within the broader Amerind perspective. PROTO-AMERIND `1' Let us begin our study of Proto-Amerind numerals with the proposal by Edward Sapir in 1913 that two contiguous-but very different-languages spoken along the northern California coast, Wiyot and Yurok, were most closely related to the widespread Algonquian family that stretched from the Atlantic seaboard to northern Montana. I have already examined in some detail the bitter controversy that this proposal engendered (Ruhlen, 1994c). What I would like to do here is to pursue one thread of Sapir's argument beyond the Algic family that he identified in his seminal article. One of the etymologies that Sapir proposed in support of Algic (=Algonquian +Wiyot+Yurok) was the number `1': Wiyot go't-, Yurok qoot-, and Algonquian forms such as Fox neguti, Ojibwa ningoto-, Natick nequt, and Blackfoot nitukska, which Sapir suggested had arisen from earlier *nituki-, and still earlier *nikuti-, by metathesis. The Algonquian forms differed from the Wiyot and Yurok forms by the presence of an initial ni- or ne-, which appears at the beginning of all Proto- Algonquian numerals from `1' to `8.' To explain this discrepancy Sapir surmised that perhaps "original Algonkin -got- [was] modified to nI-got- by analogy of other numerals with n-" (Sapir, 1913, p. 630). In his celebrated reconstruction of Proto-Central Algonquian, Leonard Bloomfield (1946) proposed *nekotw-i, but consideration of the Eastern Algonquian languages has led modern scholars to revise this to *ne-kwet-wi, where the initial vowel of the root was actually the diphthong we, reduced to o in the central and western languages. The initial prefix and the final suffix seen on the numeral `1' are also found on the numerals 2-5 in Algonquian (Picard, 1986). With regard to Algic, the modern view is that Wiyot and Yurok have lost the initial prefix, rather than that it spread to the number `1' analogically, as Sapir had guessed. Proulx (1984, p. 184) reconstructs Proto-Algic *ne-kwet-, or *ne-kwets-, `1.' But does the story of this particular numeral end at the borders of Algic, or can traces of this numeral be found elsewhere in the Amerind family to which Algic belongs? I would like to now present evidence that the Proto-Algic numeral `1' just discussed most probably already existed in Proto-Amerind, in only slightly different form, and, furthermore, that it formed part of a system of counting that can be projected back to Proto-Amerind. Evidence from the numerals `2' and `3' will also Proto-Amerind Numerals 211 be adduced in support of the Proto-Amerind system. Joseph Greenberg (1987, p. 175) proposed that the Algic forms are related to Proto-Salish *nak', or *nek'-u? (Kuipers, 1970, p. 61), which has given rise to such modern forms as Coeur d' Alene nƒÃk'w-ƒÃ' '1,' nik'w-`be tribe' (i.e. `be one with the tribe, be one of the tribe'), Flathead nk'wu, Kalispel nk'wu?, Wenatchee-Columbian nk'w-, Musqueam *nets'-a?, Lummi nets'e?, Duwamish dec'u?, Twana dec'o-, Clallam nets'u?, Upper Chehalis nacv'aw, Colville-Okanagan nk'w, Spokane nk'w'u?, Saanich nets'e?, Samish netsa?, and Tillamook nec'-. Kuipers himself remarked on the "striking" resemblance of the Proto-Salish forms with Kutenai -ok'w(e)- `to be one,' n?ao:k'we: `the one, the other,' na?nka `orphan.' He also noticed the similarity between Shuswap s-ne-nke `orphan' and Kutenai na?nka `orphan' (cf. also Thompson s-nen' eke? 'orphan'), though he attributed this resemblance to "linguistic contacts" rather than to convergence or common origin. Yet an additional remnant of the Proto-Amerind word for `1' appears to have been preserved in the Kutenai noun class marker -nik? `one of, one belonging to.' In fact, as Kuipers noted, the resemblance would be even more striking if one accepted the alternate Proto-Salish reconstruction, first proposed by Morris Swadesh (1949, p. 171), *nek'w-e?, but Kuipers opts for a plain velar ejective-which became labialized before-u?-because the alternate solution, with a labialized velar, is "more complicated for Salish" (Kuipers, 1970, p. 61). In a nutshell, the ambiguity in the reconstruction of this form is due to the fact that in the two basic subgroups of Salish we find reflexes which presuppose a different Proto-Salish reconstruction. Proto-Coast Salish *nac"-(e.g. Tillamook nec'-) would require Proto-Salish *nak'-, while Proto-Interior *nak'w- (e.g. Coeur d'Alene nƒÃk'w-) indicates rather Proto-Salish *nak'w-. It is for this reason that there has been a dispute among Salish scholars over the character of the final consonant. Who is right? There are, at least, two possible explanations for this distribution, which might be called the Salish-internal and Salish-external explanations. The Salish-internal explanation sees Proto-Salish *nak'- developing regularly into Proto-Coast-Salish *nac'- , but irregularly into Proto-Interior Salish *nak'w under the influence of a following labializing suffix, -aw'>-u?. The Salish-external explanation would see Proto-Salish *nak'w- as remaining unchanged in the Interior languages, while undergoing an irregular delabialization of the consonant to *nak'-in Proto-Coast- Salish, after which it shares the regular outcome of -k' in these languages, leading to *nac'. The difficulty with the external explanation is that it requires an ad hoc delabialization of the consonant in Proto-Coast-Salish; the advantage is that the Salish reconstruction would agree exactly with the labialized velar seen in the Wakashan, Kutenai, and Algic words for `1,' which, except for this labialization, are highly similar to the Salish word. The advantages of the internal explanation 212 M. RUHLEN are that it doesn't require the ad hoc delabialization in Proto-Coast-Salish, and it provides a plausible phonetic environment for the subsequent labialization in the interior languages; the disadvantage of the internal solution is that the Proto-Salish form differs from the Wakashan, Kutenai, and Algic words in lacking labialization and thus, if these forms are all cognate, Proto-Almosan *-k'w would have developed into Proto-Salish *-k', only to revert to Proto-Interior *-k'w at some later stage. It seems to me that neither solution can be ruled out a priori and that either may be correct. But if I had to bet, I would bet on the external solution as the historically reel one.
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