Numeral
.docxNumeral
The numeral is a part of speech denoting number or order.
Numerals may be used in the sentence in the function of:
1. an attribute : Ten people are wanted for the job. The second song was a great hit.
2. a predicative : My son is twenty and my daughter is twenty-two.
3. the subject, an object or an adverbial modifier when substantivized: Seven is a lucky number. The two left the office early
Numerals fall into cardinals and ordinals.
Cardinal numerals are used in counting and answer the question “How many?” : She has three questions to ask. He caught four fish yesterday.
All cardinal numerals may become substantivized and turn into nouns. : Take this actress. At sixty seven she’s still a size eight.
Mind that if the numerals hundred, thousand, million are modified by another numeral, they take no plural ending: five hundreds of people – five hundred people . Three thousands of children – three thousand children
We count: by tens, by hundreds, by thousands, also by the hundred, by the thousand: The child learned to count by tens.
Remember the following idioms with numerals: to be dressed to the nines, to be on cloud nine (with joy, happiness), to be in seventh heaven, to be at sixes and sevens…, on all fours.
Ordinal numerals denote order or position and answer the question “Which?”
Most of them are formed from cardinal numerals by means of the suffix -th (sixth, seventh, etc.), except first, second, and third.
Ordinal numerals which modify nouns are usually preceded by the definite article: The distance is nothing; it is only the first step that is difficult
The indefinite article may also be used with the ordinal numeral. In such cases the meaning will be “an additional one”, “one more”. : He opened a second beer. She accepted the offer without a second thought.
Remember some set phrases of the kind: a first night, a first love, a first-class college, a second-rate stamp, a first step, etc. : The young people met at a first night of “Hamlet”.
Fractional numbers.
In fractional numbers the numerator is a cardinal numeral and the denominator is an ordinal (used as a noun):
two-thirds, three-sixths. : Decimal fractions: 1.62 = one, point six, two.
The spoken forms of 0 are:
1. nought ([nɔːt]) used in mathematics — 0.7 = nought point seven / .07 = point nought seven
2. zero (['zɪərəʊ]) used in science, for example, in temperatures — –15 C = minus fifteen degrees or fifteen degrees below zero
3. O ([əʊ]) used in telephone numbers — 01–500–3026 = O one — five double O— three O two six
4. nil or nothing used in scores in such games as football — 2 : 0 = the score was two nothing or two nil
1. Books use various numbering systems, including Roman numerals: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, etc. for 1–10.
2. M = 1000, D = 500, C = 100, L = 50, X = 10, V = 5, I = 1.
3. Dates on monuments are also sometimes written in Roman, e. g. 1985 would be MCMLXXXV, where M = 1000
(CM = 1000 – 100 = 900), L = 50, XXX = 30 (i. e. 3*10), and V = 5.