Category talk:Ordinal numbers
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Cleanup[edit]
The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for cleanup.
This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.
I'm not sure I'll ever understand the dividing line between our "topic" vs. "grammar" category trees, but should this category be called "Category:English ordinal numbers"? Rod (A. Smith) 23:59, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
- Ah, the perennial number/numeral issue. The problem you've noticed exists for all numerals. My personal practice is to consider "Numeral" the part of speech, and use subcategories like Category:Cardinal numbers and Category:Ordinal numbers (or Category:es:Cardinal numbers, etc) for the specific words.
- The core difficulties are (1) no one can agree on whether to call the POS "Number" or "Numeral", where a vote on the matter deadlocked, and (2) not all cardinal numbers (by topic) are also cardinal numbers (by grammar). That is, there are cardinal numbers such as aleph-null that are cardinal numbers by definition, but do not function like the grammatical class of cardinal numerals. As a result, the dividing line here is very, very fuzzy.
- In my edits, I've chosen to categorize these words topically, then group the topical categories as subcategories of grammatical categories like Category:Spanish numerals. It's a compromise designed to avoid some of the difficulties. ...I hope that's clear, because this is a diffuclt issue to explain because of the inherent imprecision of the labels. --EncycloPetey 02:03, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
- This is the subject of a current vote, so I'm closing this (long dead) debate. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:52, 27 February 2010 (UTC)