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Cardinal number

In linguistics, more precisely in traditional grammar, a cardinal number or cardinal numeral (or just cardinal) is a part of speech used to count, such as the English words one, two, three, but also compounds like three hundred and forty-two

cardinal (adj.)

"chief, pivotal," early 14c., from Latin cardinalis "principal, chief, essential," from cardo (genitive cardinis) "that on which something turns or depends; pole of the sky," originally "door hinge," of unknown origin.

What's the relation between the two?

Community
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laggingreflex
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Cardinals are quite simply the primary, most ‘basic’ form of numerals.

Different languages have different categories of numbers (English has cardinals, ordinals, and a few repetitionals or multiplicatives [once, twice]; Latin has these as well as distributives; Irish has animatives; etc.), but if a given language has numerals at all, it will almost certainly have at least cardinals.

The other types of numbers are given names for what they indicate apart from numeric values: ordinals indicate an ordering, etc.

Cardinals, being the primary type, indicates just the numeric value and nothing else.

Janus Bahs Jacquet
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  • What do you mean with "animatives" in Irish? I have been trying to look it up but couldn't find anything with that term – Jon Jun 03 '22 at 20:56
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    @Jon I’m not sure if ‘animative’ is an actual term – I may just coined it for the occasion to match ‘multiplicatives/distributives’. They’re a specific set of numerals used to count/refer specifically to people and other entities considered animate enough to be ‘people-like’, sort of like ‘pair’ and ‘trio’ in English. Their forms are: 1 duine, 2 beirt, 3 triúr, 4 ceathrar, 5 cúigear, 6seisear, 7 seachtar, 8 ochtar, 9 naonúr, 10 deichniúir, [nothing for 11] and 12 dháréag (for other numbers, the cardinals are used). – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jun 03 '22 at 21:32
  • Thanks for the clarification – Jon Jun 04 '22 at 22:03
  • Related. – tchrist Dec 13 '23 at 13:03
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So if cardinal meant "something on which everything depends", then a Cardinal in the Catholic church is an important person who makes decisions, etc. A cardinal number is the basic number on which other numbers are based.

Tim Lloyd Gilley
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  • Welcome. Are you asking a question or giving an answer? Can you show that "something on which everything depends" applies when describing cardinal numbers? – Davo Mar 29 '21 at 17:19