A GEOMETRIC PERCEPTION OF CROPLAND AND VILLAGE IN EURASIA BY USING THE WORDS FOR 4, SQUARE

Given the early contact between Indo-European and Altaic in Central As ia, this paper analyzes the cognitive mechanisms of the direct causal relation between the number four and the words for 'cropfield, village , town' in Eurasia. The semantic extensions of the words for 'four' ar e explained in the following three consecutive arguments. First, the s ense of 'four' is taken to denote 'four-sided, square'. Second, the sq uare figures are used to refer to cropfieid and some other quadrate pl ain figures and objects. Third, village, garden, town and city fall am ong the quadrilateral figures and are so named. In the same language a nd related languages a semantic extension may be transparent, but it b ecomes quite opaque cross-linguistically. What is known is that the wo rds for 'square' and 'quarter' derived from the words for 'four'. Unde r this guidance, Old English oorp 'farm, village' is to be related to Mongolian dorben 'four', OE tun 'town' to Manchu duin 'four', Tokharia n A kwas- 'village' to Manchu hoson 'quarter, square', and Persian cah ar 'four' to Mongolian cagarsun 'paper'.