Lyngngam

Linguist providing data and dateː Dr. Anne Daladier, LACITO-CNRS (Centre Nationale de Recherche Scientifique), Paris, France. October 19, 2011, March 22, 2012. Other comments: Lyngngam has a decimal system. The above data is taken from Langkymma dialect of Lyngngam in West Khasi Hills, India. Lyngngam is spoken by approximately 12,000 speakers in Kamrup district, Assam state and Meghalaya state, India as well as Bangladesh. Lyngngam cardinals belong to a late Pnaric cardinal system which slightly differs from a War one, more conservative from an AA viewpoint. The Pnaric and War composite cardinal systems are analysed in details in the light of very conservative Pnaric-War-Lyngngam (PWL) Austro-Asiatic ''groupings'' systems in Daladier (to appear) '' Grouping is used in the sense of Menninger (1969). The names of these PWL groups are found again with shifts in their cardinal values all over AA languages'' Groupings in this PWL counting system use combinations of groupings in base four, five and twenty. Vestiges of such numeration bases are found in Munda cardinals (see Zide 1978) and in TB cardinals (see Matisoff 1997 and Mazaudon 2010). Vestiges of numeration in base four and five are found in some MK cardinal systems, see Jenner (1976) and MPI (2010). In addition to the Pnar and War cardinal systems, where Khasi and Lyngngam cardinal systems are inherited from the Pnar one, two main pairs of number classifiers for humans and non humans are used in Pnaric-War-Lyngngam: a pnaric one and a War one. Interestingly Lyngngam seems to have remains of a South Munda one with opposite values. Menninger, K. (1969). [1934]. Number words and number symbols. A cultural history