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constructed simply by adding one (e.g. 1,998,776,062 + 1 = 1,998,776,063).
However, if we consider the actual words we use to name the number, we get
a different view of the set – we actually use a very small group of words to
name any number we come up with. Thus, large as it may be, 1,998,776,062
can be read as “one nine nine eight seven seven zero six two zero” – using
only seven different words in all. Even if we read the number as “one billion
nine hundred and ninety eight million, seven hundred and seventy six
thousand and sixty two”, we have used only ten different words for numerals
(plus the conjunction, “and”). So the actual set of numeral names is really
quite small. Occasionally a new numeral is coined – particularly in response to
the need for labelling the increasingly large (kilo-byte, mega-byte, giga-byte)
and small (milli-gram, micro-gram, nano-second) numbers required to
measure the size and speed of components in the fields of e.g. astronomy,
biology, chemistry, electronics, and physics. Other examples of coinages
which are potential members of the numeral class come from everyday usage,
including slang:
• ENGLISH: dozen (12), score (20)
• DANISH: dusin (12), snes (20), tusse (1000 kr.), plovmand (500 kr.)
Observe that several of these words might equally be classified as nouns. This
is also true of the common names for coins and bills (English: penny, nickel,
dime, quarter, dollar, pence, pound, tenner, fiver; Danish: øre, krone).
Overlapping class membership, when seen from the point of view of rigorous
scientific method, is a frustrating fact of real life and the real world (are
transvestites male or female? How do we classify people who have undergone
a sex change (which pronoun should we use: he or she, han or hun)?
Ordinal numbers: Note that both English and Danish make use of suffixes to
mark the ordinal numbers. In English, the basic suffix is –th, starting with
fourth (cp. fifth, sixth, tenth, hundredth, ten billionth). The main exceptions are
the first three ordinal numbers (first, second, third) and those numbers ending
with one of these three (forty-first, seventy second, ninety-third). In Danish,
the basic suffixes for ordinal numbers are –te (første, femte, sjette, ellevte,
tolvte, femogtredivete) and –ende (syvende, ottende, niende, tiende, trettende,
treogtyvende). As is the case in English, Danish has its exceptions:
(anden/andet, tredje, fjerde). Of course, English has many words ending in the
suffix –th which are not ordinal numbers. One such group involves terms of
measurement (depth, length, width, breadth), but there are others as well
(health, wealth, stealth). Similarly, Danish has many words ending in the
suffix –te (følte, delte, læste) and –ende (flyvende, sygende, liggende) which
are not ordinal numbers. But while it might be difficult to instruct a computer
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John M. Dienhart