Language name and location: Veddah, Moneragala, Sri Lanka [Refer to Ethnologue]

语言名称和分布地区: 维达语, 斯里兰卡东部山区

1. ekama, ekamay

2. dekama

3. tunama

4. hatarama

5. pahama

Linguist providing data and dateː Dr. Philip Baker, University of Westminster, London, UK., July 31, 2009.

提供资料的语言学家: Dr. Philip Baker, 2009 年 7 月 31 日.

Other comments: Veddah or Vedda does have three counting systems. One consists of Sinhala numerals to which -may [maj] is added (this is the fusion of two Sinhala emphatic suffixes). the second has a base of 5 so that six is "five more 1", seven is "five more 2" (using Sinhala elements but no such system exists in Sinhala). The third includes no spoken numbers. Instead fingers are displayed, as follows. The number 12 consists

of a display of ten fingers followed by a word which can be glossed as 'so much', followed by a display of two fingers. Similarly 26 would be ten fingers + ten fingers + six fingers. But no spoken words to fill in on your form. I have not done any work on 'Modern" Vedda for more than two years and do not expect to have any time to get back to that for at least two months. My data are partly from recordings I made and partly from published sources. The latter do not mark stress or distinguish between [a] and [ə] This is because there is variation between these two vowels which is almost always predictable from stress placement, and since the authors of these publications are Sinhalese and therefore know where the stress falls it does not occur to them to mark this. In the usual system, Veddas almost always add -ma to the normal Sinhala form. This is the emphatic suffix in Sinhala (but is rarely used with numbers in that language). these are the forms of numbers where there is an immediately following noun. In Sinhala, numbers can also follow the nouns they qualify but then they require a final - y [j] which historically meant 'exactly' or 'precisely'. In such cases the stress shifts from the first syllable to the final syllable, and what had been final, unstressed ə changes to stressed [aj]. In Sinhala, the base forms of the numerals are used both in counting 1, 2, 3, etc. - éka, déka, túna, etc. and when followed by the noun they qualify. (Acute accent for stress.) When following the noun, the corresponding forms are ekáy, dekáy, tunáy, etc. In "modern" vedda, preceding the noun the forms are ékəma, dékəma, túnəma, etc. The forms used in counting are: ékəmáy, dékəmáy, túnəmáy, etc. My research has been concerned almost exclusively with identifying features of "modern" Vedda which are not of Sinhala origin. Thus the numbers are of limited interest to me and i have never tried to elicit all the numbers from, say, 1 to 100. The ones given below are simply those which occur in my data. As indicated in an earlier message, copied below, to me the only interesting thing in this area is knowledge of two other systems which were formerly used, what might be called the tava and mettay systems described here.

Veddah or Bedda is a nearly extinct language with approximately 2,500 ethnic population live in Baddulla, Kandy, Matale, Nuwara Eliya, and Polonnaruwa districts in eastern mountains and Moneragala district, Sri Lanka. Most of Veddah have shifted their language to Sinhala.