Numeral Formation in Ígálâ: Morphological Structure, Arithmetic Logic, and Typological Insights

Abstract

This paper offers the first detailed typological account of the numeral system of Ígálâ, a West Benue-Congo language of Nigeria, addressing a longstanding gap in descriptive and comparative research. Drawingon native-speaker data, elicitation, and textual sources, the study shows how Ígálâ encodes arithmetic through systematically organized morphological and syntactic processes. Numerals up to ten have distinct lexical forms, while eleven to nineteen follow a quasi decimal additive pattern. From twenty upward, the system is fundamentally vigesimal, with higher numerals constructed through multiplication anchored on twenty and fifty, and extended by additive combinations and recursive stacking. The vigesimal optimum, which caps multiplication at nineteen, yields forms that are both cognitively transparent and typologically coherent. Borrowed items from Hausa and English occur mainly in monetary contexts and remain structurally peripheral. Overall, the Ígálâ evidence not only affirms the vigesimal base as the organizing principle of the system but also sharpens our understanding of Greenbergian universals, showing how high-before-low ordering can be maintained with unusual consistency across operations. The system is thus both theoretically significant for crosslinguistic models of numeral typology and practically relevant for orthographic standardization and language pedagogy.