The Re-Examination of an Expression of “Cardinal Meaning and Ordinal Meaning” from the Perspective of Linguistic Typology
Keywords:
numeral and quantifier phrases, cardinal, ordinal, identifiabilityAbstract
In many languages, the structure used to represent cardinal and ordinal meanings is not determined by word order; that is, the positions of cardinal and ordinal numbers are on the same side of the noun, forming "Ordinal + N., Cardinal + N." and "N. + Ordinal, N. + Cardinal" word order. In addition, the two most typical ways to add the ordinal meaning are to add suffixes after the cardinal number or to add a word with the ordinal meaning before the cardinal number. However, the positional conversion between numbers and quantifiers can distinguish cardinal and ordinal meanings in a few minority languages, including the Palaung, Wa, and Dai. The investigation's findings revealed that the structures "numbers + quantifiers" and "quantifiers + numbers" convey the meaning of the cardinal and the ordinal numbers, respectively. The researcher believed that the Identifiability Principle, which states that the word's meaning and function are changed by its frontmost position, and the frontmost position is the most identifiable component, causes this phenomenon.
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