Early Serbi-Mongolic-Tungusic lexical contact: Jurchen numerals from the Shirwi (Shih-wei) in North China

Many scholars have written about the Jurchen-Manchu numerals 11-19, beginning with Wilhelm Schott (1853). Berthold Laufer (1921) first recognized the Mongolic affinity of these numerals, and his basic proposal has been largely upheld since. Despite the long history of work on this subject, the precise details of the relationship between these numerals and Mongolic, the specific language or dialect from which the numerals were borrowed, and the historical context of this loan relationship have remained unexplained. I propose in this paper that the attested Jurchen numerals for 11-19 are probably reflexes of Archaic Jurchen numerals borrowed from the Serbi-Mongolic language of the Shirwi (Shih-wei).