Major and Minor Chronotopes in a Specialized Counting System

The Northern English Sheep Counting Score, a stray numeral system, has been vexing folklorists and linguists for over a hundred years. I suggest that the form of the score reflects a process of specialization distinct from the abstract mathematical functions which characterize common numeral systems. This specialization is explored through the use of Bakhtin's concepts of minor and major chronotopes. Chronotopes, understood as the creation of spatiotemporal ground on which indexicality has meaning, are used to describe the ways that contiguity and sequence form dialogically interacting indexical relationships at various levels of analysis, from minimal adjacent pairs and rhythm, to performance, to the large‐scale chronotopes organizing scholarly and popular discourses. [Sheep Count, chronotope, indexicality, numeral systems, ethnomathematics]