ordinal interrogatives

[G.Lazard]

Dear Frans,

    It seems that somebody said that Roman languages do not have ordinal
interrogative words. French has one: quantieme, ex. le quantieme jour du
mois.
   It is a rare word practically used only in the administrative style. It
is certainly unknown by the majority of French speakers.
    However there is another word in the colloquial language, although it is
deemed "incorrect": combientieme, from combien? "how much? how many? +
suffix -(t)ieme, as in troisieme "third", huitieme "eighth". Ex.:
    c'est le combientieme biscuit que tu es en train de manger? "it is the
how-many-th cookie that you are eating?'

    This question reminds me of another one. What is much rarer and more
interesting than ordinal interrogative pronouns   is an interrogative verb.
Such a word exists in Tahitian (Polynesian). aha is a purely interrogative
word, which, with an article, is a pronoun, and, with an aspectual particle,
is a verb. Ex.

       te aha "what?"
       ART
       e   aha te pahî "What does/will the ship do?"
       ASP        ship

(cf. Lazard & Peltzer, Structure de la langue tahitienne, Paris 2000, just
published).

    I have seen an interrogative verb also in another language, but I do not
remember which one.

    Best wishes.

    Gilbert Lazard


----------
>De : Frans Plank <Frans.Plank at UNI-KONSTANZ.DE>
>À : LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
>Objet : ordinal interrogatives
>Date : Mar 13 fév 2001 13:11
>

> Here's an interim summary on ordinal interrogatives.
>
> 1.  They are commoner than you think--or rather, than I thought.
>  Thanks everybody for spreading such useful knowledge.
>  Incidentally, Albanian has them, too.  In many grammars that I
> checked in vain over the weekend I bet you anything they inadvertently
> escaped the grammarian's attention.
>
> 2.  However, they are never basic expressions.
>
> 3.  They are always based on quantity interrogatives ('how much/many?') and
> always utilize the morphology of ordinal numerals, itself sometimes drawing
> on superlative morphology.  Hence:
>  (a)  If there are ordinal interrogatives, then there are quantity
> interrogatives (but not vice versa).
>  (b)  If there are ordinal interrogatives, then there are ordinal
> numerals formed from cardinal numerals (but not vice versa).
>
> 4.  They are easy to create, given the prerequisites:  You just extend
> ordinal morphology from cardinal numerals to quantity interrogatives.
>
> 5.  A language having the means necessary to create them, namely quantity
> interrogatives and ordinal morphology, may still hesitate to do so for
> essentially two reasons:
>  (a)  quantity interrogatives are only insufficiently entrenched
> themselves (as in English, where they consist of a manner interrogative and
> a multal quantifier, just like any combination of 'how' and an adjective,
> whereas in German this combination is arguably univerbated, with the
> quantifier tending to lose its inflection and with stress typically on the
> interrogative part, as per compound word stress);
>  (b)  the communicative need to create them is not so urgent, since
> the same job--more or less, though perhaps not quite as precisely-- can
> also be done by quantity interrogatives themselves or also by quality
> interrogatives.  Thus, Finns in elevators might simply ask "Which floor?",
> and under the circumstances will rarely be misunderstood as asking about
> the floor the elevator currently is at;  or instead of asking (i) I might
> more simply ask (ii):
>
> (i) Das wie-viel-t-e Schnitzel frisst du jetzt gerade?
>  'The how-many-th schnitzel are you devouring right now?'
> (ii) Wie-viel-e Schnitzel hast du schon gefressen?
>  'How-many schnitzel have you already devoured?'
>
> What is at issue in this conversation is the the specification of the
> cardinality of a quantity.  In (i), when asking about the point in a
> sequential ordering of items that has by now been attained, and when giving
> the appropriate answer (e.g., "the sixth"), the quantity is specified by
> implication--who is currently eating a sixth schnitzel will, when (s)he is
> done with it, have eaten six schnitzels.  In (ii), the request is to
> specify the quantity directly, and should an item be added to it, its
> position in the sequence will be the n+1'th.  Perhaps there is some
> uncertainty here as to whether a current item is to be included in the
> cardinality of the set:  If someone who is just eating another schnitzel
> answers question (ii) by saying "five", the one currently being eaten may
> be the sixth or only the fifth.  Ordinal interrogatives preclude such
> ambiguity;  perhaps that's why we have made the negligible effort to create
> them.
>
> frans.plank at uni-konstanz.de