Syntactic function

§ 233. Though cardinals and ordinals have mainly similar syntactic functions they differ in certain details.

The most characteristic function of both is thatof premodifying attribute:

two rooms, the third person, etc.

In this connection it must be remembered that while the ordinals are used as ordinary attributes, cardinals with the function of an attribute govern the number of the noun they modify:

one page, but two (three, etc.) pages.

Note 1:

Quite unlike Russian, composite cardinals ending in one (twenty-one, thirty-one, two hundred and one, three hundred and twenty-one, etc.) requirea plural noun:

twenty-one pages, two hundred and one pages.

Note 2:

In numbering the items of certain sets of things cardinals, not ordinals, are used to modify the nouns denoting these things. The cardinals thus used are always postmodifying. The nouns modified do not take an article:

page three, lesson one, room thirty-five, etc.

(In Russian both ordinals and cardinals are possible in this case, though ordinals are preferable. Compare:

пятая страница and страница пять,

десятая аудитория and аудитория десять.)

Both cardinals and ordinals may have the functions ofsubject, object, predicative andadverbial modifier of time:

Three of us went home.

I saw two of them in the forest.

They were seven.

She got up at five today.

However, in all these cases a noun is always implied, that is, the numeral functions as a substitute for the noun either mentioned in the previous context, or self-evident from the situation. The only case in which the numerals (cardinals) can really have the function of subject, object or predicative is when they are used with their purely abstract force:

five is more than three; two plus two is four, etc.

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