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185
compound numeral has the form of the ordinal:
twenty-first, forty-second, sixty-seventh, one hundred and first, etc.
Morphological characteristics
§ 231. Numerals do not undergo any morphological changes, that is, they do not have morphological
categories. In this they differ from nouns with numerical meaning. Thus the numerals ten (десять),
hundred
(сто), thousand (тысяча) do not have plural forms:
two hundred and fifty, four thousand people, etc.,
whereas the corresponding homonymous nouns ten (десяток), hundred (сотня), thousand (тысяча) do:
to count in tens, hundreds of people, thousands of birds, etc.
Patterns of combinability
§ 232. Numerals combine mostly with nouns and function as their attributes, usually as premodifying
attributes. If a noun has several premodifying attributes including a cardinal or an ordinal, these come first, as
in:
three tiny green leaves, seven iron men, the second pale little boy, etc.
The only exception is pronoun determiners, which always begin a series of attributes:
his second beautiful wife;
these four rooms;
her three little children;
every second day, etc.
If both a cardinal and an ordinal refer to one head-noun the ordinal comes first:
the first three tall girls, the second two grey dogs, etc.
Nouns premodified by ordinals are used with the definite article:
The first men in the moon, the third month, etc.
When used with the indefinite article, they lose their numerical meaning and acquire that of a pronoun
(another, one more), as in:
a second man entered, then a third
(вошел еще один человек, потом еще).
Postmodifying numerals combine with a limited number of nouns. Postmodifying cardinals are combinable
with some nouns denoting items of certain sets of things:
pages, paragraphs, chapters, parts of books, acts and scenes of plays, lessons in textbooks, apartments
and rooms, buses or trams (means of transport), grammatical terms, etc.;
room two hundred and three, page ten, bus four, participle one, etc.
Note:
In such cases the cardinals have a numbering meaning and thus differ semantically from the ordinals which
have an enumerating meaning. Enumeration indicates the order of a thing in a certain succession of things,
while numbering indicates a number constantly attached to a thing either in a certain succession or in a certain
set of things. Thus, the first room (enumeration) is not necessarily room one (numbering), etc. Compare: