Identifying Numerals: "Collective Numeral" Redirects Here. It Is Not To Be Confused With or

In linguistics, a numeral (or number word) in the broadest sense is a word or phrase that describes
a numerical quantity. Some theories of grammar use the word "numeral" to refer to cardinal numbers
that act as a determiner to specify the quantity of a noun, for example the "two" in "two hats". Some
theories of grammar do not include determiners as a part of speech and consider "two" in this
example to be an adjective. Some theories consider "numeral" to be a synonym for "number" and
assign all numbers (including ordinal numbers like the compound word "seventy-fifth") to a part of
speech called "numerals"[1][2] Numerals in the broad sense can also be analyzed as a noun ("three is
a small number"), as a pronoun ("the two went to town"), or for a small number of words as
an adverb ("I rode the slide twice").
Numerals can express relationships like quantity (cardinal numbers), sequence (ordinal numbers),
frequency (once, twice), and part (fraction).[3]
Identifying numerals[edit]
"collective numeral" redirects here. It is not to be confused with collective number or collective noun.
Numerals may be attributive, as in two dogs, or pronominal, as in I saw two (of them).

Many words of different parts of speech indicate number or quantity. Such words are
called quantifiers. Examples are words such as every, most, least, some, etc. Numerals are
distinguished from other quantifiers by the fact that they designate a specific number.[3] Examples are
words such as five, ten, fifty, one hundred, etc. They may or may not be treated as a distinct part of
speech; this may vary, not only with the language, but with the choice of word. For example, "dozen"
serves the function of a noun, "first" serves the function of an adjective, and "twice" serves the
function of an adverb. In Old Church Slavonic, the cardinal numbers 5 to 10 were feminine nouns;
when quantifying a noun, that noun was declined in the genitive plural like other nouns that followed
a noun of quantity (one would say the equivalent of "five of people"). In English grammar, the
classification "numeral" (viewed as a part of speech) is reserved for those words which have distinct
grammatical behavior: when a numeral modifies a noun, it may replace the article: the/some dogs
played in the park → twelve dogs played in the park. (Note that *dozen dogs played in the park is
not grammatical, so "dozen" is not a numeral in this sense.) English numerals indicate cardinal
numbers. However, not all words for cardinal numbers are necessarily numerals. For
example, million is grammatically a noun, and must be preceded by an article or numeral itself.
Numerals may be simple, such as 'eleven', or compound, such as 'twenty-three'.
In linguistics, however, numerals are classified according to purpose: examples are ordinal
numbers (first, second, third, etc.; from 'third' up, these are also used for fractions), multiplicative
numbers (once, twice, and thrice), multipliers (single, double, and triple), and distributive
numbers (singly, doubly, and triply). Georgian,[4] Latin, and Romanian (see Romanian distributive
numbers) have regular distributive numbers, such as Latin singuli "one-by-one", bini "in pairs, two-
by-two", terni "three each", etc. In languages other than English, there may be other kinds of number
words. For example, in Slavic languages there are collective numbers which describe sets, such
as pair or dozen in English (see Russian numerals, Polish numerals).
Some languages have a very limited set of numerals, and in some cases they arguably do not have
any numerals at all, but instead use more generic quantifiers, such as 'pair' or 'many'. However, by
now most such languages have borrowed the numeral system or part of the numeral system of a
national or colonial language, though in a few cases (such as Guarani[citation needed]), a numeral system
has been invented internally rather than borrowed. Other languages had an indigenous system but
borrowed a second set of numerals anyway. An example is Japanese, which uses either native or
Chinese-derived numerals depending on what is being counted.
In many languages, such as Chinese, numerals require the use of numeral classifiers. Many sign
languages, such as ASL, incorporate numerals.

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In linguistics, a numeral (or number word) in the broadest sense is a word or phrase that describes

Numerals may be attributive, as in two dogs, or pronominal, as in I saw two (of them).

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