Re: Ordinal numbers

From: Prai Jei (pvstownsend_at_zyx-abc.fsnet.co.uk)
Date: 12/29/04 

Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2004 00:16:46 +0000

Peter T. Daniels (or somebody else of the same name) wrote thusly in message
<41D1BB26.61ED@worldnet.att.net>:

> 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).

Nine Mile Point was an interchange between two British railway companies -
until they were all merged to become British Rail in 1948. There was a
station with two platforms and two signal boxes (one for each company)
although there was no actual community which was served thereby. It stood
more or less that far from Newport, Gwent.
The cardinal form "Nine" is used since the reference is to a number of
miles.

Treinta y Tres, Uruguay is named after its latitude (33°S). Again the simple
cardinal form is used to refer to a quantity of something, here the number
of degrees south of the Line. 

-- 
Paul Townsend
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