Re: Types of numerals

Quoting John Vertical <johnvertical@...>:

> Roger Mills  wrote:
> >
> >John Vertical wrote:
> > > First off, I confess that I not sure if you'll recognize "numeral" as a
> > > word for the class of "number words" (never seen it used in that way
> > > in English; only Finnish.)
> >
> >I'm not totally sure what you're getting at here, but-- in Engl., I feel
> >that "numeral" refers mainly to the written form of the number, and it
> >sounds rather grade-school-ish at that:  "All right, children, write down
> >the numeral "five"...." in which case it's simply a synomyn for "number"
> >but with rather limited usage.
>
> As I was afraid. Still, nobody seems to know another word for "number
> words". Finnish grammar (as taught at high school level) traditionally
> distinguishes "numerals" as a part-of-speech of their own, but maybe you
> Indo-Europeans don't really need a separate class.
FWIW, they're counted as separate part-of-speech in Swedish, usually called
_räkneord_ "counting words".

                                                   Andreas