ordinal interrogatives (just a few remarks)

[Richard Valovics]

> Date sent:      	Mon, 12 Feb 2001 13:58:13 -0600
> Send reply to:  	Edith A Moravcsik <edith at CSD.UWM.EDU>
> From:           	Edith A Moravcsik <edith at CSD.UWM.EDU>
> Subject:        	ordinal interrogatives
> To:             	LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG

>  Hungarian also has fractional interrogatives as German does:
>
>                hany-ad?        'what fraction?'
>
>  A 6 ha'nyada a 24-nek?  "the 6 what-fraction the 24-of?"
>        'What fraction of 24 is 6?'
>

I had to stretch my imagination considerably to interpret the above
sentence as Edith intended it. I think a more conspicious version is

"A 6 ha´nyad re'sze a 24-nek?" (the 6 what-fraction part the 24-of).

This does not - of course - negate the fact that Hungarian has a
fractional interrogative, I just don't think it is readily nominalized.
The word final "a" in Edith's "ha'nyada" (and for that matter, the "e"
in my "re'sze" is 3sg possessive refering to 24.

> Could it be that the reason English does not have "how many-eth" is that
> "how many"  is two words and it is strange to use a derviational affix on
> a two-word  base?
>

I rather think that the reason for English not having "how many-eth"
is the fact that it doesn't have "many-eth" either. Perhaps, the
prerequisite for having interrogative ordinals is having indefinite
ordinals. Hungarian, for sure, allows "sokadik" (many-eth), although
"sok" (many/much) is not related to the corresponding
interrogatives "ha'ny" (how many) and "mennyi" (how much).

> I find - as Frans Plank does - that, when I point out this "gap" in
> English to speakers of English and mimic the missing word as "how
> many-eth", it is very hard to even understand for the speakers of English
> WHAT this would mean.
>
> Edith M.
>

By the way, interrogative ordinals and indefinite ordinals are as
ununderstandable to native Danes as they are to native speakers of
English. It would, however, be interesting to see whether there is a
difference between Danish dialects in this respect. One might for
instance imagine that Danish dialects in Northern Germany do
possess interrogative and/or indefinite ordinals. (This would be a
similar case for Danish to Swedish, where Finland Swedish has an
interrogative ordinal (probably because of Finnish influence)
whereas mainland Swedish doesn't (see earlier contributions of
other authors to this mailing list).) Moreover, it would be interesting
to see whether languages, like English and Danish, which at
present do not have such ordinals, had them in earlier times.

Richard Valovics

Richard Valovics
Skelagervej 313
DK-8200 Aarhus
Tel.: +45-86 10 96 16