Numeral (linguistics)

In linguistics, a numeral is a member of a word class (or sometimes even a part of speech) designating numbers, such as the English word 'two' and the compound 'seventy-seven'.

Identifying numerals

Numerals may be attributive, as in two dogs, or pronominal, as in I saw two (of them).

Many words of different parts of speech indicate number or quantity. Quantifiers do not enumerate, or designate a specific number, but give another, often less specific, indication of amount. Examples are words such as every, most, least, some, etc. There are also number words which enumerate but are not a distinct part of speech, such as 'dozen', which is a noun, 'first', which is an adjective, or 'twice', which is an adverb. Numerals enumerate, but in addition have distinct grammatical behavior: when a numeral modifies a noun, it may replace the article: the/some dogs played in the park → twelve dogs played in the park. (Note that *dozen dogs played in the park is not grammatical, so 'dozen' is not a numeral.)