Re: Adjectives and ordinal numbers

Fredrik Ekman wrote:

>In Swedish, adjectives and ordinal numbers have many things in common.
>From a syntactic point of view, for instance, both are used as attributes,
>both can be substantivized, etc. There is also a morphological connection,
>since the words for "first" and "second" are inflected according to the
>noun's gender (with -e or -a) in the same way as most adjectives.
>
>Are such similarities common in natlangs? Should I try to give these two
>classes similar features in my conlangs (if I want them to have a
>"natural" feel)?
Yes, that is common. Compare Spanish segunda/segundo etc.

>For instance, I am considering an adjectiveless language. Would it be
>normal for such a language to not have any proper ordinal numbers either?
You'd probably end up with noun ordinals meaning "the first one", "the
second one" and so on.

M