In linguistics, a numeral 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 that specify the quantity of a noun, for example the "two" in "two hats". Other 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 "first") to a part of speech called "numerals".Charles Follen: A Practical Grammar of the German Language. Boston, 1828, p. 9, p. 44 and 48. Quote: "PARTS OF SPEECH. There are ten parts of speech, viz. Article, Substantive or Noun, Adjective, Numeral, Pronoun, Verb, Adverb, Preposition, Conjunction, and Interjection.", "NUMERALS. The numbers are divided into cardinal, ordinal, proportional, distributive, and collective. [...] Numerals of proportion and distribution are [...] &c. Observation. The above numerals, in fach or fäl´tig, are regularly declined, like other adjectives."Horace Dalmolin: The New English Grammar: With Phonetics, Morphology and Syntax, Tate Publishing & Enterprises, 2009, p. 175 & p. 177. Quote: "76. The different types of words used to compose a sentence, in order to relate an idea or to convey a thought, are known as parts of speech. [...] The parts of speech, with a brief definition, will follow. [...] 87. Numeral: Numerals are words that express the idea of number. There are two types of numerals: cardinal and ordinal. The cardinal numbers (one, two, three...) are used for counting people, objects, etc. Ordinal numbers (first, second, third...) can indicate order, placement in rank, etc." 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).
Identifying numerals
Numerals may be attributive, as in two dogs, or pronominal, as in I saw two (of them).
Words across various parts of speech often denote 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. 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. (*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 fractional numerals in English, but other languages distinguish the two completely), multiplicative (adverbial) numbers (once, twice, and thrice), multipliers (single, double, and triple), and distributive numbers (singly, doubly, and triply). Georgian, Latin, and Romanian (see Romanian distributive numbers) have regular distributive numbers, such as Latin "one-by-one", "in pairs, two-by-two", "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 (monad, pair/dyad, triad) 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), a numeral system has been invented internally rather than borrowed. Other languages had an indigenous system but borrowed a second set of numerals anyway. Two examples are Japanese and Korean, which use 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.
Larger numerals English has derived numerals for multiples of its base (fifty, sixty, etc.), and some languages have simplex numerals for these, or even for numbers between the multiples of its base. Balinese, for example, currently has a decimal system, with words for 10, 100, and 1000, but has additional simplex numerals for 25 (with a second word for 25 only found in a compound for 75), 35, 45, 50, 150, 175, 200 (with a second found in a compound for 1200), 400, 900, and 1600. In Hindustani, the numerals between 10 and 100 have developed to the extent that they need to be learned independently.
In many languages, numerals up to the base are a distinct part of speech, while the words for powers of the base belong to one of the other word classes. In English, these higher words are hundred 102, thousand 103, million 106, and higher powers of a thousand (short scale) or of a million (long scale—see names of large numbers). These words cannot modify a noun without being preceded by an article or numeral (*hundred dogs played in the park), and so are nouns.
In East Asia, the higher units are hundred, thousand, myriad 104, and powers of myriad. In the Indian subcontinent, they are hundred, thousand, lakh 105, crore 107, and so on. The Mesoamerican system, still used to some extent in Mayan languages, was based on powers of 20: bak’ 400 (202), pik 8000 (203), kalab 160,000 (204), kinchil 3,200,000 (205), alau 64,000,000 (206) and hablat 1,280,000,000 (207).
Numerals of cardinal numbers
The cardinal numbers have numerals. In the following tables, [and] indicates that the word and is used in some dialects (such as in Standard British English and by many American speakers), and omitted in other dialects (as prescribed by many style guides for Standard American English).
This table demonstrates the standard English construction of some cardinal numbers. (See next table for names of larger cardinals.)
Value Name Alternate names, and names for sets of the given size 0 Zero aught, cipher, cypher, donut, dot, duck, goose egg, love, nada, naught, nil, none, nought, nowt, null, ought, oh, squat, zed, zilch, zip, zippo 1 One ace, individual, single, singleton, unary, unit, unity 2 Two binary, brace, couple, couplet, distich, deuce, double, doubleton, duad, duality, duet, duo, dyad, pair, span, twain, twin, twosome, yoke 3 Three deuce-ace, leash, set, tercet, ternary, ternion, terzetto, threesome, tierce, trey, triad, trine, trinity, trio, triplet, troika, hat-trick 4 Four foursome, quadruplet, quatern, quaternary, quaternity, quartet, tetrad 5 Five cinque, fin, fivesome, pentad, quint, quintet, quintuplet 6 Six half dozen, hexad, sestet, sextet, sextuplet, sise 7 Seven heptad, septet, septuple 8 Eight octad, octave, octet, octonary, octuplet, ogdoad 9 Nine ennead 10 Ten deca, decade, das (India) 11 Eleven onze, ounze, ounce, banker's dozen 12 Twelve dozen 13 Thirteen baker's dozen, long dozen 16 Sixteen hex 20 Twenty score 21 Twenty-one long score, blackjack 22 Twenty-two Deuce-deuce 24 Twenty-four two dozen 40 Forty two-score 50 Fifty half-century 55 Fifty-five double nickel 60 Sixty three-score, shock 64 Sixty-four stack 70 Seventy three-score and ten 80 Eighty four-score 87 Eighty-seven four-score and seven 90 Ninety four-score and ten 100 One hundred centred, century, ton, short hundred 111 One hundred [and] eleven eleventy-one 120 One hundred [and] twenty long hundred, great hundred, (obsolete) hundred 144 One hundred [and] forty-four gross, dozen dozen, small gross One thousand chiliad, grand, G, thou, yard, kilo, k, millennium, Hajaar (India), ten hundred One thousand [and] twenty-four kibi or kilo in computing, see binary prefix (kilo is shortened to K, Kibi to Ki) One thousand one hundred Eleven hundred One thousand seven hundred [and] twenty-eight great gross, long gross, dozen gross Ten thousand myriad, wan (China) One hundred thousand lakh, lac Five hundred thousand crore (Iranian) One million Mega, meg, mil (often shortened to M) One million forty-eight thousand five hundred [and] seventy-six Mibi or Mega in computing, see binary prefix (Mega is shortened to M, Mibi to Mi) Ten million crore (India, Pakistan) One hundred million yi (China) One billion arab, bil, milliard (see below) One hundred billion kharab
English names for powers of 10 This table compares the English names of cardinal numbers according to various American, British, and Continental European conventions. See English numerals or names of large numbers for more information on naming numbers.