4.3.4. Numeral incorporation
In some cases, cardinal and noun are not conveyed through two distinct lexical signs, rather they come together to form a single sign. This phenomenon is known as numeral incorporation (LEXICON 3.10.1.1).
Numeral handshapes (usually from 1 to 5, in some cases from 1 to 10) are combined with movement, location, and orientation of a root. The possible roots, namely signs that can be modified to accommodate a numeral handshape, are nouns (LEXICON 3.1), pronouns (LEXICON 3.7), and classifiers (MORPHOLOGY 5). Three illustrative examples are provided below: the noun year (a), the first-person plural pronoun ix1pl (b), and the whole-entity classifier for upright person (c).
a. year^four
‘Four years’
b. ix1pl^four
‘The four of us’
c. CL(4): ‘come’
‘Four people approaching’
This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant Agreement No 693349.