ordinal interrogative pronouns

[Max Wheeler]

--On Friday, February 9, 2001 17:23 +0100 Frans Plank
<Frans.Plank at UNI-KONSTANZ.DE> wrote:

> Ordinal Interrogatives

Latin had such an adjective: quotus/-a/-um, for which the Oxford Latin
Dictionary offers the following English gloss, necessarily somewhat
cumbersome: 'Having what position in a numerical series?' Often used with
hora 'hour (of the day)' so Quota hora est? 'What is the time?', and with
annus 'year', dies  'day'.  Analogously to the German term which has been
discussed, you said also in Latin Quota pars/portio...? 'What
proportion...?', 'What percentage...'

Quotus is derived from the indeclinable quot 'how many?' with the commonest
N/Adj suffix -us/-a/-um.

NB Latin also had an interrogative quotiens 'how often?'

Despite its deficiencies with ordinal interrogatives, English can at least
deal with the 'how often?', 'how many?' type of question because 'how' is
available as an interrogative degree word. Romance languages generally lack
an interrogative degree word, so that it is as difficult to ask 'How
often?' in e.g. Spanish or Catalan as it is to do 'Die wievielte
Schnitzel...?' in English. Rather than ask 'how often do you visit the
dentist?' you're more-or-less obliged to substitute a yes-no question ('do
you visit the dentist often?') with the degree interrogative at best a
conversational implicature.

Max


____________________________________________________________
Max W. Wheeler
School of Cognitive & Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Falmer
BRIGHTON BN1 9QH, G.B.

Tel: +44 (0)1273 678975 Fax: +44 (0)1273 671320 Email:
maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk
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