Grammatical categories of numeral

The English numeral as a part of speech is characterized by the following features:

1) its lexico-grammatical meaning of “number”;

2) such typical stem-building suffixes as -teen, -ty;

3) the category of numerical qualification represented in opposemes like seven – seventh;

4) its unilateral combinability with nouns (three children, the third child);

5) its syntactic function as an attribute, less frequently as some other part of the sentence.

The lexico-grammatical meaning of “number” is not to be confused with the grammatical meaning of “number”:

a) The former is the generalization of a multitude of lexical meanings of individual numerals (five, ten, fifty seven, etc.). The latter is the generalization of only two grammatical meanings: “singular” and “plural”.

b) The plural number, as in boys, shows indefinite plurality, whereas the meanings of numerals, as in twenty, forty are definite plurality.

Numerals are usually divided into two groups, as it has been mentioned above, – cardinal numerals (one, five, twenty) and ordinal numerals (first, fifth, twentieth). The former denote some numerical quantity, the latter – some numerical order.

The difference between these two groups is sometimes exaggerated to such an extent that they are treated as belonging to different parts of speech. For instance, A.I. Smirnitsky is of the opinion that only cardinal numerals form a separate part of speech, whereas cardinal numerals are adjectives [24; 92–93].

In the opinion of B. Khaimovich and B. Rogovskaya, the pair ten – tenth forms an opposeme of the grammatical category of numerical qualification [24; 92–93].

The lexical meaning of the two words expressed by the lexical morpheme ten- is the same. They are opposed only grammatically by the opposition of the zero morpheme in ten and the -th morpheme in tenth. The opposition is as regular as that of the zero morpheme of the singular and the -(e)s morpheme of the plural. The meaning of the zero morpheme is that of “numerical quantity”, and the meaning of the -th morpheme is that of “numerical order”.

In the opposemes one – first, two – second, three – third the meaning of numerical qualification is expressed by means of suppletivity and sound interchange.

The words half, quarter, zero, nought, score, etc. which have no ordinal opposites, but possess plural opposites are nouns, not numerals. The same in Ukrainian: words like одиниця, десяток, дюжина, сотня, пара are the numeral nouns (числові іменники).

English and Ukrainian numerals are similar as to their lexico-grammatical meanings, ways of stem-building, combinability and syntactic functions, but they differ greatly regarding their grammatical categories.

1) Unlike their English counterparts, Ukrainian numerals possess the categories of gender (третій – третя – третє), case (три – трьох – трьом), and number (перший – перші).

2) There is a great difference between ordinal and cardinal numerals in Ukrainian as far as their categories are concerned. Ordinal numerals resemble adjectives not only in having the categories of number, gender and case, but in the forms of the grammatical morphemes as well. Compare: третій – мужній, третього – мужнього, etc. Cardinal numerals do not possess the categories of number and gender (with the exception of один, два). Therefore, the numeral in English is the indeclinable part of speech, whereas in Ukrainian it is declined according to the same six cases as nouns.

In both languages numerals expressing the number as the characteristic feature of some object do not have the category of number themselves. In Ukrainian only the numeral один somehow retains the correlation of singular and plural forms, though in reality its plural form is reconsidered (переосмислений). Thus in combination with nouns, which do not have the singular number, it really renders the singleness of the object (одиничність предмета) (compare: одні сани, одні окуляри), but in other cases it acquires the meaning of pronoun (compare: одні хлопці мені говорили).

The category of gender is altogether absent in English numerals. In Ukrainian the majority of numerals do not have it either (from 3 to 999). The gender characteristics are differentiated only in numerals один (одна, одно), два (дві), обидва (обидві), півтора (півтори). Besides the numeral один the rest of these numerals have the common form for the masculine and the neuter gender. The gender forms in all the numerals are expressed only in the nominative and accusative cases. For the rest of cases all three genders coincide in one form (e.g.: двох чоловіків, жінок, вікон).

The declension of Ukrainian numerals is not a united consistent (послідовний) system, it contains the samples of different declensions. The numeral один is declined as a demonstrative pronoun той, та, те. The rest of numerals are declined very differently. Numerals from 5 to 90 (except 40) have in the genitive, the dative and the local cases one common form with the flexion - и. Also they have the common form for the nominative and accusative cases, and only in the instrumental case they have the separate form with the flexion - ма (шістьма). Numerals 40, 90, 100 have the common form for the whole rest of indirect cases (сорока').

Such a unification of indirect cases shows that the system of declensions in Ukrainian is being ruined. Morphological forms of numerals transfer their semantic load onto the syntactic forms.

The collective numerals двоє, троє and others have only the nominative case, in other cases the forms of usual cardinal numerals are used instead of them (двох, двом, двома). The collective numerals обидва, обидві, обоє have the forms of the numeral оба in indirect cases, which was widely used in older times.

The numerals півтора, півтора, півтораста are not declined altogether.

In both languages the numeral can be used independently without the modified noun. In such cases they are somehow substantivized, performing different syntactic functions, typical for nouns. In Ukrainian the collective nouns of the type двоє, троє, четверо and others and their diminutive forms двійко, трійко are very often used without nouns.

The peculiarity of the English language is the often use of cardinal numerals in the role of ordinal ones. It happens usually by denoting the year, the chapter of the book, the page, the number and so on, e.g.: page five (п’ята сторінка), number six (шостий номер), lesson two (другий урок), in the year nineteen seventeen (у 1917 році). In Ukrainian such a usage is only possible with the word номер (аудиторія номер десять). In other cases the ordinal numerals are always used.

The ordinal numerals are most often used in the function of attribute in both languages: the first floor, другий поверх. The forms of ordinal numerals, similar to forms of adjectives, are wholly syntactic ones: they are revealed only as a consequence of existing of certain categories by the corresponding nouns with which these ordinal numerals are agreed (Форми порядкових числівників, як і форми прикметників, цілком синтаксичні: вони виявляються виключно як наслідок існування певних категорій у відповідних іменниках, з якими ці порядкові числівники узгоджуються) [5; 58–59].

The combinability of English and Ukrainian numerals is rather limited. As a rule, they form combinations with nouns. Numerals usually precede the nouns they modify, e.g.: three boys – три хлопці, first day – перший день. Numerals, as a rule, are not modified by other words. This negative combinability is also a characteristic feature of the part of speech.

Discussion questions and exercise tasks:

I. Consider your answers to the following:

1. Characterize the groups of numerals in English and Ukrainian languages.

2. What are the peculiarities of Ukrainian collective numerals?

3. What are the groups of English and Ukrainian numerals according to their stem-structure?

4. Compare the group of fractional numerals in both contrasted languages.

5. What are the peculiarities of Ukrainian ordinal numerals in comparison with the English ones?

6. Characterize numeral as a part of speech (think of the number of grammatical categories, typical stem-building elements, combinability, syntactic functions). Do these characteristics differ or coincide in the contrasted languages?

7. How can you characterize the combinability of numeral as a part of speech in English and Ukrainian languages?

 

II. Find all the numerals in the following piece of writing. Classify these numerals being either cardinal or ordinal (is pos­sible other type); comment on their grammatical characteristics.

1. Four people were arrested (newspaper text).

2. Four of the ten traders have pleaded guilty (newspaper text).

3. Cops in twos and threes huddle and smile at me with benevolence (fiction text).

4. Damage is estimated at hundreds of millions of pounds (newspaper text).

5. I was doing my third week as a young crime reporter and had just about finished my second nd last story of the day when the phone rang (fiction text).

6. Three men will appear before Belfast magistrates today on charges of intimidation. A fourth will be charged with having information likely to be of use to terrorists. The fifth, a woman, was remanded on the same charge yesterday (newspaper text).

7. Probably two thirds of the people who live here now are not natives (conversation transcript).

8. The pupil can identify the place value of a column or a digit for values of tenths, hundredths and thousandths (academic text).

*The material is taken from “Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English” by Susan Conrad, Douglas Biber, Geoffrey Leech, Pearson Education Limited, 2003. – P.34–35.