ordinal interrogatives

[Edith A Moravcsik]

  (a) It is interesting to note the cooccurrence possibilities of the
definite article with ordinal interrogatives in the languages from which
data have been cited.
      - In German and Dutch, the definite article occurs (obligatorily
or optionally?) with the ordinal interrogative ("das wievielte Schnitzel",
"de hoeveelste schnitzel").
      - In Hebrew, the definite article is the sole marker of the
ordinal interrogative ("definite article + how many")
      - in Hungarian, the definite article cannot occur with the
ordinal interrogative in most contexts ("ha'nyadik snicli" but
"*a ha'nyadik snicli) - even though it is obligatory with ordinal
numerals ("a hatodik" "the sixth" 'the sixth'; "*hatodik").

  (b) Antonio Gragera has remarked that the fact that English does not
have "how manieth" is unlikely to be due to the fact that "how many" is
two words because German "wieviel" also used to be two words. I think the
question is whether "wievielte" historically arose before or after
"wie" and "viel" were merged into a compound. If "wievielte" originates
from the time that "wie" and "viel" were still two words, that would show
that deriving the ordinal interrogative from a two-word sequence can
indeed happen. If "wievielte" came later, derived from the one-word
expression "wieviel", the argument does not apply.

Edith Moravcsik
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			 Edith A. Moravcsik
			 Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics
			 University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
		         Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413
                         USA

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