There are quite a lot of different parts of speech in Russian. All of them perform certain functions, all of them are necessary for correct, competent speech. However, unfortunately, the vast majority of the population does not remember anything from the course of the school curriculum. All they know is the existence of three categories - verb, adjective and noun. But other parts of speech are just as important! For example, the name is numeral.
Definition
Let's imagine that we are back at school and we have a Russian lesson in which we go through numerals. And for starters, it’s worth reminding all those who didn’t listen very carefully to the teacher in grades 4-6: the numeral is the word for quantity, number (that’s why the name is). They count objects, and therefore their other name is counting words. They answer questions such as "how much?" (five, twenty, one hundred and seventy three), "which?" or "what?" (first, sixteenth, two thousand and eighteenth).
A trip to history
At the school lesson, the numeral is taught briefly and sparingly. As, however, and everything else. Nonewill tell how and how the numerals were formed. In the meantime, this is very interesting. And if children at school were given such information about the name of the numeral, control and other tests, they would write completely with fives.
So, the Old Russian language. It is immediately noteworthy that there were no counter words as a category of speech in it. At all. Despite the fact that it was necessary to count, of course. But in the absence of special words for counting, people used the designations of parts of the human body - for example, they measured the length with the elbow, and the number with the metacarpus (they used to call the hand, the palm with five fingers). If it was necessary to count something more than five, they counted five times several times - as in the famous fairy tale about Ivanushka the Fool, who was given “seven-five caps of silver” for horses with golden manes, that is, seven times five pieces each.
Themselves numerals (that is, the words that we now know under this definition) the inhabitants of Ancient Russia had only twelve. This included all counting words from one to ten, as well as a hundred and a thousand. A little later, in the thirteenth century, the thirteenth numeral appeared - forty. As for the rest, their history began much later, and the formation of such units of speech occurred by transforming two words into one, combining the counting words that the ancients had.
The formation of the numeral as a part of speech
For a long time, the words "one", "two", "three" and so on, which were at the disposal of the ancients, referred to them far from being countable, but to nouns oradjective. This happened because there was no common feature that these words would have exclusively and which would thereby unite them, separating them from other words. To correct this misunderstanding, it took time, after which the future numerals lost the categories of gender and number, the meaning of objectivity and began to resemble each other much more. All this made it possible, finally, to single out these words into one large general group, and this significant event took place already in the fourteenth century. It would be more accurate to say that then this process started, turned out to be launched, and four centuries later, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, it finally ended.
The first person to talk about the numeral as a part of speech was, of course, the great mind of that time, Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov. It is by this name and this category that the scientist called counting words in his grammar. Next, let's talk about the signs of the numeral as a part of speech.
Signs of numerals
Having talked about the historical events that preceded the formation of counting words as they are at this stage, it is worth returning to today and telling in more detail about the characteristics of these words. Subject: "Numeral" is taught in high school, and even those who were straight A students can hardly remember all of their signs.
The first and most important thing to remember: all numerals are divided into groups depending on the value. There are only two such groups (otherwise they say "categories"), a littlethey will be discussed in more detail later. And how to distinguish numerals? The next sign by which this can be easily done is a change in gender, number and case, like adjectives. This does not apply to all groups of numerals; and we will return to this below. In addition, depending on the category, numerals can play any syntactic role, that is, be any member of the sentence.
Discharges
As mentioned above, according to their meaning, numerals are divided into two groups, but before talking about them, it is worth saying a few more words about the fact that they can be divided into classes and by structure. In such a classification, three types of numerals are distinguished:
- simple (one, two, three, four, five) - they have one root,
- complex (fifty, seventy) - they have two roots,
- compound (fifty-five, one hundred and ten) - they have several words in common.
Returning to what they say at school (in the 6th grade) about the numeral, it is necessary, finally, to note that in their meaning, counting words are either collective or quantitative. Some, however, still distinguish ordinal and fractional numbers. We will talk about each of these categories below.
Cardinal numbers
These counter words answer the question "how much?" and indicate the number when counting - two balls, five dogs and the like. Numerals without nouns (just two or five) are also included in the category of quantitative, then they say that we are talking about an abstractitem.
A quantitative numeral has case forms, but has no gender or number. The latter is true for all countable numbers of this category, except for the number one (it changes in every way), as well as the numbers two (there is a feminine and masculine gender) and one and a half (the same). Those who are concerned about the question of how to distinguish numerals from other parts of speech can pay close attention to the declension of this category: it differs for different words. So, for example, words from one to four are declined as adjectives, but from five to twenty (and thirty in addition to them) - as feminine nouns ending in a soft sign (in other words, related to the third declension). Words like fifty are inclined as follows: each of the parts is subject to change (we now remember that such words have two roots, that is, two parts). By the same principle, not only all complex, but also all compound numbers change. And one hundred, forty and ninety are generally declined in a special way: they have only two of all case forms (nominative and accusative), which are used in six cases.
Collective numbers
Collective numerals are in many ways similar to quantitative ones. They are called collective because a certain number is defined as a single whole, as if collecting it in a bunch: five cars is a cardinal number, but five guys are already collective. According to the rules, the word “both” with the form “both” also belongs to such counting words, despitethat some scholars tend to classify them as pronouns. The collective name of the numeral as a part of speech has several characteristic features: firstly, such words are not used with feminine nouns - never! Second, they decline as plural adjectives.
Ordinal numbers
Some distinguish them from the category of quantitative ones. Then how to distinguish numerals from others? In general, it's pretty simple. These counting words do not just indicate the quantity, they call the order in the count, that is, pointing to any one separate object, they indicate its serial number. This category includes such words as first, second, thirteenth, forty-sixth, ninetieth and the like. As you might guess, ordinal numbers answer not the question "how much?", but the question "what?" or “which?”.
They resemble adjectives in that they change in number, case and gender. As this category, they are inclined, which gives many linguists the right to attribute these counting words to adjectives in general. An interesting feature that distinguishes ordinal numbers from others: if you need to change a composite number by case, for example, the ordinal number of the year is two thousand and eighteen, then only the last word will decline (in this case, the eighteenth), while the rest will remain unchanged.
Fractional numbers
Not everyone singles out these counter words in a separate category. However, it may make sense for thosewho does not understand how to distinguish the numerals of one group from another. You can’t confuse fractional numbers with anything else - after all, they call not whole numbers, but fractional ones: five eighths, six elevenths, and so on. Nevertheless, their meaning coincides with quantitative ones, so we can say that fractional counter words are some kind of quantitative "colleagues".
Indefinite cardinal numbers
Very rare linguists-scientists distinguish even the fifth category of numerals. They call them indefinitely quantitative and desperately argue with those who attribute these words to pronouns. We are talking about such words as several, few, few, many, many, so many and others. Thus, indirectly, the number of necessary items is nevertheless named (“buy a few pears” - that means a couple of things), but the right number is directly indicated. A few is how much? How much? And little? This uncertainty, according to many linguists, necessitates the allocation of the fifth group, which will contain similar words that are different from others.
Nevertheless, these words have a lot of features that are in no way inherent in numerals. For example, they are in the form of a comparative degree, they cannot decline, and they are also subject to subjective evaluation (five is five for everyone, and a little or a lot is different for everyone). Thanks to this fact, these words have a lot in common with adverbs, nouns and pronouns.
The riddle of some numbers
Continue our Russian lesson in 6th grade. Subject -"Numeral". It's time for entertaining stories - stop giving boring definitions, it's better to learn a little about how some numerals happened and what they used to mean.
The first counting number, the origin of which must be remembered, is seven - special, mysterious for many, both in antiquity and to this day. Among Christians, this number was considered holy, and the Holy Scriptures recognized the seven deadly sins, which are transmitted to the seventh generation. For the ancient inhabitants of Egypt, the seven was also an unusual number. They perceived it as a synthesis of three and four, where the first was the basis of life, the family - it is the three that form the basis of the family: mother, father and child - and the second symbolized the cardinal points and wind directions.
The numeral forty mentioned above, which appeared in the lexicon of the ancients a little later than the first twelve counting words, had “bag” as its first meaning, and “shirt” as its second. Even now, a shirt, predominantly for men, is often called a shirt. But the numeral one leads its account from the Slavic word one, that is, one.
The numeral two came, most likely, from the ancient Indian language. In it, it sounds almost the same - "duva". The numeral four (which, by the way, is not loved in China, Korea and Japan, considering it associated with death) has a root from the Latin language - “kuattuor”. By the way, it is common with such words as a square and a quartet - it is not for nothing that a square has four corners, and a quartet has four people. The number eight has changed little:earlier it sounded like "eight", that is, about seven, following the seven; and ten owes its origin to the Latin word "decem". And, finally, a million, which appeared thanks to Marco Polo in the thirteenth century, who combined the Italian word “milli” (thousand) and “one”, translated into Russian as the suffix “isch”, indicating something big, huge. So a million is nothing but a thousand.
Entertaining games with numbers
This part of speech is very often used in all kinds of puzzles and riddles for kids. For example, in such ones: i100riya, 7ya, 100roz, me100, 3umf, s3zh, 100yka, po2l, vi3na and so on.
Very often counter words come across in the titles of films. You won't remember everything! “Two Captains” and “Seventeen Moments of Spring”, “Three Plus Two” and “Two Fates”, “Only Old Men Go to Battle” and “Two: Me and My Shadow”… The list goes on and on, and it will cover only cinema. But no less than this list in the literature. More and more! “The Three Little Pigs” and “The Three Musketeers”, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” and “The Wolf and the Seven Kids”, “The Sign of the Four” and “The Fourth Height” - both our and foreign authors and directors like to use numerals in their works.
Proverbs and sayings with numerals
They are a dime a dozen too. Moreover, if you push yourself, you can remember sayings that contain a variety of numerals. But offhand, as a rule, those that tell about one or two things come to mind: about two boots, which are a pair, or about two hares,who do not need to be chased at the same time, or about one warrior who is not a warrior at all in the field … Of course, the immortal phrase about one who is for everyone, and about the ear from which everything flies out should be included in the same list … In general If you sit and think, there will be a great many such sayings in your memory. We really just don’t think about how often and how much we use certain parts of it in our speech.
Funny riddles with numbers
Since our Russian lesson is entertaining, you can't do it without riddles. Of course, not just any - those that contain numerals. They are also in abundance in our speech. For example:
- Five closets - one door (glove).
- The raven croaked at a hundred cities, at a thousand lakes (thunder).
- There is a house with twelve windows, each window has four maidens, each maiden has seven spindles, each spindle has a different name (year, months, weeks, days).
Interesting facts
- In ancient times, instead of the numeral "ten thousand" they used the word "darkness", borrowed from the Turkic peoples. Ten million was called a crow, but a hundred was already a deck.
- Numbers on paper for a long time were denoted not by numbers, but by letters in alphabetical order.
- Linguists cannot agree on a single opinion about the words thousand, million and billion. Some classify them as nouns, while others still refer to them as numerals.
- A little about spelling: words like fifteen, seventeen, nineteen, sixteen, eighteen are nothave a soft sign in the middle - unlike words like these: fifty, sixty, and so on (this is covered in the subtopic dedicated to the numeral in grade 6).
- Numerals combine the characteristics of a noun and an adjective.
- There are two forms of the same numeral - zero and zero. You can use both in writing and in speech.
- In French, the name of the numeral seventy is translated into Russian as “sixty and ten”, and the numeral eighty as “four times twenty”. As for the numeral ninety, its translation is even more interesting: "four times twenty and ten." Such a funny manner is not only among the French - it is rather strange and unusual that numerals from Georgian and Danish are also translated into our language. In Danish, for example, the numeral seventy translated into Russian literally means the following: “halfway from three times twenty to four times twenty.”
- The particle "not" with numerals is written separately.
- The name of the ninth month of September comes from the Latin numeral "septem", which translates into Russian as "seven". The same with the names of October, November and December - they were formed from the Latin numerals eight, nine and ten, respectively. The reason for this is the celebration of the New Year at that time in March.
- The numeral zero in Russia is not a natural number, but in Europe it is the opposite.
- Because of the fear of the number thirteen in some countries, there is no thirteenth floor in houses, or rather, its designation - after the button twelve inThe elevator immediately goes fourteen. By the way, about the same story with the number four in Japan, China and Korea - they skip the fourth floor in their houses.
- The largest numeral is a centillion (one and six hundred zeros).
- The numeral ninety, according to an unconfirmed hypothesis, came from the phrase "nine to a hundred", and not "nine for ten" by analogy with other numbers of this kind.
Numerals are a very interesting, entertaining and exciting material to study. It is a pity that at school all the discussion of any topic is directed, by and large, only to correctly write a dictation. The numeral, meanwhile, after the written control will no longer be studied, and everything serrated will instantly disappear from the children's heads. If in educational institutions they approached the matter sensibly and knew how to interest children, most adults, even at fifty, would remember what a numeral is and what are its main features. I hope that someday this will be the case!
