ordinal interrogatives

[Frans Plank]

PS. As for your query about the ordinal interrogatives, I can confirm what
many experts certainly have told you already. Interrogative ordinals (formed
>from the word for 'many' or 'how many' with the regular ordinal suffix) seem
to be a Uralic characteristic, although both the stems and the affixes can
be of different etymological origins.

Finnish has an interrogative ordinal: mone-s-ko, where -s- [oblique stem
-nte- ~ -nne- < *-nti] is the regular affix for ordinals, cf. e.g. neljä-s
'fourth' from neljä 'four'. (BTW, Haberland's example had a typo: it should
be _monesko päivä_ instead of "päivää".]  Estonian has _(kui) mitme-s_
(where _kui_ is 'how' - note that Estonian has no interrogative clitics -
and the word for 'many' has no direct counterpart in Finnish, but the suffix
is the same). Hungarian has _hányadik_ (with hány 'how many' and the regular
ordinal suffix, cf. _negyedik_ 'fourth' from _négy_ 'four'; the -d- in the
suffix might historically go back to the same -nt- as in the Finnic suffix).
Of other Uralic languages, a quick check confirmed that at least Mordvin has
a similar interrogative ordinal: (Erzya) _z'aroc'e_ is formed of _z'aro_
'how many' with a regular ordinal suffix. Komi shows _ky-mynõd_ (with the
interrogative pronoun stem _ky-_ and _mynõd_ which looks like a one-to-one
etymological counterpart of Finnish _mone-s : mone-nte-_; otherwise, the
stem _myn-_ only appears in interrogatives and the like: õt-myn 'gleich
viel' [õt- '1'], sy-myn 'soviel', according to Uotila's dictionary).

Considering the typical richness of morphology in Uralic, I should say that
an interrogative ordinal is to be expected. And, as a native speaker of
Finnish, I find it completely natural and "thinkable". However, it is beyond
my competence (and it would be extremely interesting to know), whether these
constructions are alive and actively used in present-day Uralic languages of
Russia proper (and if not, what is used instead of them).

--
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Johanna Laakso
Institut für Finno-Ugristik der Universität Wien
Spitalgasse 2-4, Hof 7, A-1090 Wien
johanna.laakso at univie.ac.at | http://mailbox.univie.ac.at/Johanna.Laakso