LINGUIST List 7.1298

Tue Sep 17 1996

Qs: Letters as numbers, _had to_, Kazak and African ling

Editor for this issue: Ann Dizdar <dizdartam2000.tamu.edu>

Directory

1. Deborah Milam Berkley, letters as numbers
2. hiro-tIAS.TOKUSHIMA-U.AC.JP, _had to_
3. George Huttar 709 2400, books wanted on Kazak, African linguistics

It was claimed recently in my presence that the three languages of the
Christian Bible, Hebrew, Aramaean, and Greek, use letters to represent
numbers (instead of or in addition to special numeral characters), and
that they are the only three languages in the world to do this.

I felt somewhat skeptical of this claim in its entirety. Can anyone
tell me if it is true or false?

Thank you very much.

Deborah Milam Berkley
Northwestern University
d-m-berkleynwu.edu

Dear colleagues,
 One of my colleagues in Osaka asked me about the following
sentence including an epistemic _had to_. He cites it from modern
American novels. He said that he didn't understand the meaning.
Are these _had to be/ had to have been_ the same as _must have been_?
The below is his query,

- ---------------------------------------------------------------
 I would like to ask you just one question about the English modal
_had to_. I have two examples where _had to_ is used in an epistemic
sense.

 (1) "When did you last see her?" "I don't know," Newcastle said.
 "It _had to_ be sometime around midnight."

 (2) "What time did you go to bed?" "It must have been two-thirty.
 I took a bottle of Scotch and went up to my rooms. That _had to_
 have been about two."

I do not know the meaning of "It had to be..." in (1) or that of "That
 had to have been..." in (2). Could you please put these in another
 English?
 I would be very grateful if you would answer this question.

- -----------------------------------------------------------------
 Thanks in advance. I am looking forward to hearing from you.
Please e-mail me directly.

Best Wishes,
Hiroaki Tanaka
Tokushima University, Japan
E-mail: hiro-tias.tokushima-u.ac.jp

 If anyone has info on how I can obtain a copy of any of the
following, please send me an email direct at george_huttarsil.org --
thanks!

 	 1. Shinitnikov, Boris N. 1966. Kazakh-English dictionary.
 Indiana U. Publications, Uralic & Altaic Series, Vol. 28. Also
 published by Mouton & Co.

 	 2. Krueger, John R. 1980. Introduction to Kazak. Indiana
 U. Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, No. 9.

 	 3. Welmers, William E. 1973. African language structures.
 Berkeley: U. of California.