La numération cardinale en nahuatl, aux XVIe-XVIIe siècles

The vigesimal Nahuatl numeration has been well known, in language, since the 16th century. But its graphic expression in pictographic writing is less well known. It is this difference that this text seeks to reduce, by presenting, jointly, the writing of the referential numeration and that which is denominative. The sources used - both pictographic and alphabetic – are diverse both spatially and temporally. They come from Mexico-Tenochtitlan as well as from nearby but distinct localities such as Texcoco, Chalco or the Puebla region. Some sources are probably close to the time of the Conquest, while others were written a century later. For the purposes of this presentation everything has been put together. This therefore represents the state of numeration and its writing over a period of a century after the Conquest and over a wide area. It would, of course, be desirable to have a more precise view of the local forms and developments that occurred during this century, because it is inconceivable that the brutality of the shock of conquest and colonization had no effect on the system that the Nahuatl language and its pictographic writing constituted, especially in the field of numeration.