Re: Ordinal numbers

From: Peter T. Daniels (grammatim_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 12/28/04 

Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 19:59:33 GMT

Juuitchan wrote:
>
> Why is it believed that, to make an ordinal number out of a quantity,
> the quantity must be a dimensionless positive integer? For example, I
> read that a now famous road called "8 Mile" is so called because it is
> 8 miles away from something. But English has no ordinal form of "8
> miles". It should really be called "8 Mile-th Road" (or whatever). (If
> in English you can have an 8th Street, why not an 8 Mile-th Street?)
> Also, to a walker, the latitude and longitude figures (at least the
> longitude figures) given by a GPS are not cardinal at all, but rather
> ordinal. Why then, read it as cardinal?
>
> Any languages in which a latitude of, say, 38 degrees 32 minutes north
> would be reported using ordinal forms?

When I first saw a map of the Detroit region (which is where Eminem is
from), in 1962, I surmised that the names of the streets -- they go up
to at least 19 Mile Road -- were taken from milestones on some main road
north (i.e. to Flint). 

-- 
Peter T. Daniels                       grammatim@att.net