Why is it that quantities start in the Genitive (Koho Co) case and then at 5 change to the Accusative (Koho Čeho) case? Jedno pivo Dvě pivo Tři pivo Čtyři pivo pět piva Šest piva ...... and so on Thanks Colin
It's: Jedno pivo Dvě piva Tři piva Čtyři piva Pět piv Deset piv Sto piv etc. And case isn't changed. If it's nominative (1. Kdo co), it's: Je tu jedno pivo. Jsou tu dvě piva. je tu pět piv If it's accusative (4. Koho, co), it's: Dejte mi jedno pivo. Dejte mi dvě piva. . . Dejte mi pět piv . Dejte mi dvanáct piv. If it's genitive (2. Koho, čeho) it's Taková je chuť jednoho piva. Taková je chuť dvou piv. Taková je chuť tří piv. There can be diferent forms of noun by quantity, but case isn't changed.
OK, my apologies. I cannot believe I wrote such utter rubbish in my post. eso’s correction is my understanding. However, the point still stands unexplained: Why are numbers 1..4 in the nominative (1 man, 2 men, 3 men and 4 men) and numbers 5 and above in the genitive (5 of men …. etc). wer: I tried to understand your explanation, however, why should the number five be considered an abstract characterisation, and the lesser 4 articles? In any case, I could just simply ignore this quandary and simply accept that this is the way it is. Thanks for all zour input
A typical primitive perception of quantities has three levels: ONE, TWO and A LOT. Just observe kids starting learning to count, for example. There’re also some experiments with animals, with birds for example. They’re able to notice that one of 2 or 3 eggs is missing, but they rarely notice that one of 4 (5,6…) eggs is missing. The languages emerged before the discovery/understanding of all numbers (quantities) thus they conform to this primitive perception (singular×dual×plural, cognate words for “3” and “a lot” like French “trois” and “très” etc.). And because the small numbers are most used, these relicts resist to become regularized. Later, when the individual numbers replaced the quantity “a lot” they adopted the genitive from it. There were also other leaps in perception of quantities which influenced the languages, like the discovery of connection between ordinal and cardinal numbers or between cardinal numbers and fractions. For these leaps, an irregularity for small numbers is apparent even in English (one×first, two×half×second). The threshold between “small numbers” and “a lot” could be sligthly different for different languages or different leaps. Also the regularization resistence differs, Slavic languages are more resisting because of extensive inflection and because of isolation in early era.
Exactly, it is even in indoeuropean languages, where there was at first: one, two, a lot As Wer wrote in his other post, another number was added a this number "transcended" this old system, so it was called something beginnig with "tr" (tres in Latin, treis in ancient Greek, trayas in Sanskrit,...). But this change did not come alone, as the people already had been able to count to two, so they multiplied their numeral by two, so instead of binary system, there was quaternary system (with the numeral "four" - quatuor, tetaras, čatur). Later, the same process was repeated, numerals five (quinque, pente, paňča), six (sex, hex, šáš), seven (septem, hepta, sápta) and eight were added. And then, there is the mysterious number "nine"... it was revealed, that it came with another upgrade and it is a cognate with word "new", as it was a new number (novem x novus, ennea x neos, náva x návas). The conception of slavic numerals comes probably from the age, where there were but four of them. Even more interesting conception is in Russian: 1 - with nominative singular (oděn gorod) 2,3,4 - with genitive singular (!!!) (dva, tri, četyre goroda) 5+ - with genitive plural (pjať gorodov) Even wilder it becomes when there is an adjective before the noun as it assumes the form of genitive plural if there is 2,3,4, although the following noun is in genitive singular: 1 - oden vělikij gorod 2,3,4 - dva (tri, četyre) vělikich goroda :shock: 5 - pjať vělikich gorodov