Re: Cardinals and ordinals

On Friday, September 12, 2003, at 06:27 , John Cowan wrote:

> Isidora Zamora scripsit:
>
>> The ordinals are generally derived
>> from the cardinals by a regular process (in the case of English, by
>> adding
>> -th), but the first few seem not to be derived at all or are derived
>> irregularly.
>
> That's only natural, since they are far and away the most frequently used,
>  and
> so the most likely to be sound-changed as separate words rather than being
> rebuilt by the rules engine when needed, the way "twenty-seventh" is.
>
>> (English "third" is derived irregularly and "first" and
>> "second" appear not to be derived at all from the corresponding
>> cardinals.
>
> "Second" is a borrowing of the Latin ordinal "secundus" (via French),
> which is itself a semantic transfer from its basic meaning of "following"
> .
> In the Latin Bible, the Gospels are labeled things like "Secundus Marcus"
> ,
'secundum Marcum' in fact. 'secundum' (--> Fr. segon) is a preposition
meaning "according to" and governs the accusative case, hence also:
secundum Matthaeum
secundum Lucam
secundum Iohannem

> meaning not "the second Mark" but "according to [i.e., following] Mark".
>
> "First" is obviously a superlative,
..as is the Latin 'primus'.  Indeed, in Latin we may use 'primus' if and
only
if three or more entities are counted.  If there are only two we use the
comparative 'prior'

[sip]
> Gotta be all over the place.
Yep - I doubt very much if there's an IE lang where _all_ ordinals are
regularly derived from cardinals. Among non-IE langs, we have, e.g.
Hungarian
Cardina      Ordinal
  egy          elso"
  két          második
  három        harmadik
  negy         negyedik
  öt           ötödik
  ....         .....
Arabic:
Cardinal      Ordinal
  wa:hid      `awwal
  `itne:n      ta:ni
  tala:ta      ta:lit
  `arba'a      ra:bi'
  khamsa       kha:mis
   ....        ....

> In Chinese it's a prefix, which I think is very clever.
....and in Xhosa ordinals are formed by _prefixing_ the
possessive affix to the noun form of the cardinal, except for
1st which is irregular  :)

The Arabic, as one might expect with a Semitic lang, obviously
uses internal vowel gradation (except for 1st).

Ray
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