Talk:fourth

Latest comment: 3 months ago by Victor Bob in topic Categorial status of ordinals

Categorial status of ordinals

change

This is probably a wild goose chase, but could ordinals be always nouns and never adjectives? The only Adj-like property is Mod in NP (but could be a Nom like faculty in a faculty office) and pred comp (but could be a non-count singular noun). If it were an adjective, you'd expect this to be grammatical: *He arrived closely second. Even the very in very first is the very in the very one I needed rather than in very good.

  • tied for third
  • in third
  • Third goes to the team from Peru

Their derivational morphology is the same as fractionals, which are nouns, and unlike any adjective. They share no inflectional morphology with adjectives. @Victor Bob: Brett (talk) 23:20, 23 August 2024 (UTC)Reply

How do you get firstly if first is a noun? Victor Bob [talk] 05:43, 24 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
Yes the -ly adverbs are the main piece of evidence in favour of their being adjectives. But it's pretty limited ?hundredthly. First is obviously a special case. Brett (talk) 10:52, 25 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
Sounds reasonable. Victor Bob [talk] 09:44, 26 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
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