Note tipologiche a partire dai numerali baltici 11-19

The paper examines numerals 11-19 in Baltic (i.e. Lith and Latv, while in OPr these numerals are not attested). A review of their morphological structure is presented with particular attention to Mažiulis’ (1957) reconstruction. His ideas allow for reconstructing a deep morpho-syntactical structure of the type (1): X-remaining-after-10. This pattern not only accounts for the different morphological outputs displayed by Lith and Latv, but it also explains a common syntactical feature shown by both languages, that is the request of genitive plural on the quantified noun. Numerals 11-19 have the same syntactical behaviour of 10 and the other ‘round’ numerals. But while the latters originated from noun-like lexemes indicating a set of elements or a totality seen as a unit (as reflected in their singular forms), no similar argument can be used for 11-19. So, their peculiar syntax can only be explained with reference to that of 10, according to the structure (1). In the second part of the paper Luján’s (1999) typological classification of numeral systems in four types is taken into account. Special attention is paid to the concepts of proper/improper base and explicit/implicit improper base. The main hypothesis is that the series 11-19 reflects an ancient period of development of the common Baltic numeral system when it belonged to type III (improper base). Numerals from 20 on show several features of discontinuity with respect to the previous (and oldest) numerals. So, in a diachronically stratified view of numeral systems, at some point 11-19 represented the last series; and its upper limit, 20, was probably the highest lexicalized numeral. At this stage, the system was formed by: simple units (1-9); a higher unit (improper base, 10); nine units lexicalized according to the digital counting procedure x-remaining-after-10 (11-19); and, possibly, a second higher unit (20).