Re: Negative ordinality (was: Please welcome . . .)

Quoting Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>:

> On Sunday, December 14, 2003, at 06:42 PM, Andreas Johansson wrote:
>
> > Quoting Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>:
> >
> >> On Sunday, December 14, 2003, at 03:29 AM, Dennis Paul Himes wrote:
> >>
> >>> Tristan McLeay <zsau@...> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> I've never heard of `minus oneth', though; ...
> >>
> >> 'oneth'? 'minus first' surely?
> >
> > This xenophone finds the former less odd, perhaps because it suggests the
> > more
> > sensible deconstruction ((minus one)-th) rather than the oddish (minus
> > (one+th)). OTOH, he'd use the forms corresponding to "minus first" in
> > Swedish ...
>
> Which is _your_ L1, I believe.
Indeed it is. _Minus första_ is screamingly illogical, but there's no
alternative; adding _-de_ or _-te_ (not to mention _-nde_!) to
_en_/_ett_ "one" just doesn't work.

For similar reasons, I'd say _n minus första_ for _n minus oneth_.

But this failing of my native language is no reason not to do it sensible in
other languages!

                                                       Andreas