Talk:Numeral (linguistics)

message: I have removed a section about Numerology "science". I think it doesn't belong here (if anywhere at all). Or am I mistaken? 62.179.86.217 00:06, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No. Rursus dixit. (mbork3!) 13:36, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Numerology 

message: Someone proposed a split, so I'm starting the discussion. I definitely think 'numeral' as a part of speech needs its own article. The stuff on written numerals can probably be merged into other articles. Discussion of very large numerals is likewise a distinct subject. kwami (talk) 07:28, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Pro split: Yes. Numerals are treated as a specific topic in grammars. This is a different topic than peoples' choice of number base, and how they do when counting on fingers (and toes). Rursus dixit. (mbork3!) 13:46, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  split 

message: The decimal section, claiming why decimal was/is so common says (among other reasons):
a human comfort level with rounded figures and the ease it can express and calculate very large numbers
This makes no sense.  ANY base will yield round numbers 10000 is 'round' in any base --it just means different values in different bases.  And the ability to calculate very large numbers is a function of positional notation, not the paricular base chosen for it.  I've removed those two points. 164.144.252.26 (talk) 17:35, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Decimal - round numbers 

message: Could be nice to correlate the "4: quaternary" section of this article with the Quaternary_numeral_system#Occurrence_in_human_languages article. AnonMoos (talk) 09:43, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Base 4

message: I removed the section "Mathematical types", because whoever wrote it doesn't understand the difference between classifications of mathematical objects, and differing schemes for the written representation of those objects. Binary, decimal, etc., are not different types of numbers, they are simply different schemes for representing a number symbolically. Imaginary, fractional, algebraic, etc., are actually distinct classifications of objects, as opposed to just different representations. And it was an uncited WP:SYNTHESIS anyway. --SJK (talk) 09:11, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed section "Mathematical types" 

message: In the "Basis of counting system" section, under "5: quinary", reference is made to "the banish system", with banish hyperlinked to the page for banishment, as in exile. I have no idea what "banish" is and the reference is to a book, what's up?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.176.213.126 (talk) 19:10, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I could not work out what it's referring to. Banish has always been a link to Banishment or Exile, and I could not find anything like a language or culture with that name with a wider search. I did find another quinary system while searching so I've replaced it with that.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 21:33, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The word was introduced in  revision. From the edit comment in the  revision, it appears that the editor in question is dyslexic. Perhaps he actually meant Danish (although Danish doesn't have any quinary aspects as far as I can determine). You'd have to check the source, though. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:40, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Banish number system? 

message: I have replaced the sentence "Not all peoples count" with "Not all langauges have numeral systems", which is both more precise and more accurate. "Count" is too vague a term here; to say that "not all peoples count" could be read as meaning that not all peoples have a number sense, or that number sense is limited by vocabulary. This is an outdated form of linguistic determinism which has been entirely discredited by studies such as the one on Aboriginal children reported in "Aboriginal kids can count without numbers" (which, ironically, is cited as a source further down in our article). This article is about the vocabulary for naming numbers in various natural languages, which has little or no correlation with the number sense and arithmetic ability of individuals who speak those langauges. Gandalf61 (talk) 07:59, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: And the statement about Anindilyakwa (with the old spelling Enindhilyagwa) is wrong, the language has terms for numbers up to 20, but kids have mostly switched to English numbers. I'll take it out. Dougg (talk) 06:53, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Not all peoples count" - too vague, and open to misinterpretation 

message: I learned that 'numeral' is a part of speech, and that's what most of my sources say. That is, if it's a noun or adjective, it's not a numeral. We give a list of all sorts of words from other parts of speech in our 'Types of numerals' section, ref'ing SIL. Do you think maybe SIL dumbed it down a bit, because for their purposes it doesn't really matter, like calling any attributive an 'adjective'? 
Do we have a rigorous definition of 'numeral'? It would have to be language-specific, of course, but we could give examples. — kwami (talk) 08:01, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  What is a numeral? 

message: Here's the line I'm referring to: "East Asia, the higher units are hundred, thousand, myriad 104, and powers of myriad". In Japanese unlike English ten, hundred, and thousand are all treated the same. There is no "thirty" instead "three ten" is used, and saying "hundred cars (百台の車, 台 is the counter for cars)" is OK, where the article explained that it is separate in English because that can't be done. Generally the same is used for ten, hundred, and thousand, but not myriad, where "one myriad (一万)" must be used if counting something IE "one myriad grains of sand (一万粒の砂)". I'm not sure how it works in Chinese or other Asian languages, but it is probably similar. I don't know how that should be reworded if Japanese is different, but hundred and thousand are not is the same class as myriad (man) or oku, chou, and so on (while the article seems to be saying that they are. 75.105.14.244 (talk) 08:41, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think it's saying that these units all behave in exactly the same way, just that these are what the units are. I.e. in English we have (commonly used) basic words for 10, 100, 1000 and then powers of 1000, whereas in the Asian languages the basic words are [...] and then powers of 10,000. There may of course be slight differences in the way that numbers are built up from these basic words, both within and between languages. W. P. Uzer (talk) 09:06, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  The section on larger numerals doesn't really apply to Japanese 

message: Is there a reason why Romance languages such as French have "non-composite" numerals for up to 16 (seize) - 17 (dix-sept) being "composite", while Germanic languages only go up to 12 (twelve, zwölf) with the non-composite ones, vs. 13 (thir-teen, drei-zehn)? I can see the connection with a duodecimal system for Germanic languages, but is there any reference to a hexadecimal system in Romance? Dsamuelis (talk) 19:48, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Germanic vs. Romance languages 

message: Citations:
* "a numeral is a member of a word class (or a subclass of determiners) designating numbers, such as the English word 'two' and the compound 'seventy-seven'."
* "Various other number words are derived from numerals, but are not themselves numerals. Examples are ordinal numbers (first, second, third, etc.; from 'third' up, these are also used for fractions), multiplicative adverbs (once, twice, and thrice), multipliers (single, double, and triple), and distributive numbers (singly, doubly, and triply)."
But:
* The term "ordinal numeral" does exists, e.g. at [dictionary.reference.com/browse/ordinal+number] it is: "ordinal number [..] Also called ordinal numeral. any of the numbers that express degree, quality, or position in a series, as first, second, and third". Thus: ordinals are - at least for some - also numerals. So the second quote is wrong or not neutral. Other numeral terms do also exists, e.g. "distributive numeral".
* There might be other numeral terms, and some might refer to adverbs or substantives which aren't "determiners", e.g. "iterative numeral" might refer to some adverbs and "collective numeral" might refer to some substantives (like the German terms "Iterativum" and "Collectivum", see [de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zahlwort]). So the first quote (... determiners ...) might be wrong too.
* Other numeral words aren't always (linguistically) derived from cardinal numeral words, so the part "Various other number words are derived from numerals" is wrong or misleading.
-93.196.252.211 (talk) 19:57, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Improvement needed 

message: I remember that the lead section used to describe numerals as a part of speech, but now it instead says that numerals are either nouns, adjectives or adverbs. That is clearly not correct for some languages, including English where five is none of those three. I think whoever made that edit is getting terminology confused. Words like eleventh or twice are not numerals grammatically. They have a numeric meaning, but this is not a grammatical property of the word. Instead, eleventh is an adjective and twice is an adverb, and there is nothing grammatically "numerical" about them. The connection with numbers is semantical, which is indeed what the lead says: "that designate a number", i.e. the word isn't a number or numeral, but it designates/refers to one conceptually.
As a part of speech, which is what the original lead section said before it was changed, numerals are a subclass of quantifier, which in turn is a subclass of determiner. Not all cardinal number words are grammatically numerals. Some cardinal number words may be numerals while others belong to other parts of speech. Higher numbers tend to be nouns. Some languages do not even have numerals as a grammatical category, while of course they do have words to quantify things like "five". Thus, the part of speech "numeral", as a kind of quantifier, should be clearly separated from words that have a numeric meaning but not necessarily any particular part of speech. Since this article's original scope was about this particular part of speech, and not number-related words in general, I think that this scope should be restored and propagated more thoroughly throughout the article, by moving discussions about other things like ordinal number words somewhere else. Rua (mew) 23:01, 24 April 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Part of speech?