Re: Negative ordinality (was: Please welcome . . .)

On Sunday, December 14, 2003, at 06:42 PM, Andreas Johansson wrote:

> Quoting Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>:
>
>> On Sunday, December 14, 2003, at 03:29 AM, Dennis Paul Himes wrote:
>>
>>> Tristan McLeay <zsau@...> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I've never heard of `minus oneth', though; ...
>>
>> 'oneth'? 'minus first' surely?
>
> This xenophone finds the former less odd, perhaps because it suggests the
> more
> sensible deconstruction ((minus one)-th) rather than the oddish (minus
> (one+th)). OTOH, he'd use the forms corresponding to "minus first" in
> Swedish ...
Which is _your_ L1, I believe.

> At any rate, the form "minus oneth" is in use,
I know - but then so, alas, is 'thirty-twoth' for my old fashioned 'thirty-
second'.

> altho I cannot say with what
> frequency. Googling gives a paltry 47 hits, many of which are duds ("n
> minus
> oneth" and the like), but there's enough to sure it does occur, and not
> only
> as a joke.
..and those I've heard say 'thirty-twoth' weren't joking!
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On Sunday, December 14, 2003, at 06:59 PM, John Cowan wrote:
[snip]
> I pronounce n+1th as en-plus-oneth, and others do too:
but (n+1)th & (n-1)th are rather different - more like the neologisn
'zeroth'.  en-plus-first would imply another counting list starting
from n & going up.

I was commenting on simply minus-oneth, and presumably minus-twoth (sound
like a child missing one of their milk teeth!), minus-threeth etc.
counting
down from zeroth.  I daresay such things may be heard, but they still sound
barbarous to me.
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On Monday, December 15, 2003, at 12:38 AM, Tristan McLeay wrote:
>
> On Sun, 14 Dec 2003, Ray Brown wrote:
>
>> On Sunday, December 14, 2003, at 03:29 AM, Dennis Paul Himes wrote:
>> [snip]
>>
>>>     In Gladilatian the ordinal of minus one, "zmrlrzno", means "last".
>>> The
>>> ordinal of minus two, "zmrlrfsut", means "penultimate", etc.
>>
>> ..and of minus three, 'antepenultimate' etc?  Much neater IMO than
>> 'penultimate', 'antepultimate' etc. - and logical  :)
>
> What's wrong with last, second-last, third-last, fourth-last etc.? Neat
> and logical,
I didn't there was anything wrong with it.  I was commenting on the
_Gladilatian_ system.

> and a lot easier to understand than antepenultimate and such.
Agreed - I said exactly the same of Gladiliatian. So I don't understand
your quibble.  This list is about _conlangs_, isn't it?  (Tho it's hard
to believe sometimes  :)

> (What's fourth-last in that way? Is there some pattern?)
AFAIK there ain't no word for it - no pattern.

Ray
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