In
linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...
, a distributive numeral, or distributive number word, is a word that answers "how many times each?" or "how many at a time?", such as ''singly'' or ''doubly''. They are contrasted with
multipliers. In English, this
part of speech
In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech ( abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are ...
is rarely used and much less recognized than
cardinal numbers
In mathematics, a cardinal number, or cardinal for short, is what is commonly called the number of elements of a set. In the case of a finite set, its cardinal number, or cardinality is therefore a natural number. For dealing with the case ...
and
ordinal numbers
In set theory, an ordinal number, or ordinal, is a generalization of ordinal numerals (first, second, th, etc.) aimed to extend enumeration to infinite sets.
A finite set can be enumerated by successively labeling each element with the leas ...
, but it is clearly distinguished and commonly used in Latin and several Romance languages, such as Romanian.
English
In English distinct distributive numerals exist, such as ''singly'', ''doubly'', and ''triply'', and are derived from the corresponding multiplier (of Latin origin, via French) by suffixing ''-y'' (reduction of Middle English ''-lely'' > ''-ly''). However, this is more commonly expressed
periphrastically, such as "one by one", "two by two"; "one at a time", "two at a time"; "one of each", "two of each"; "in twos", "in threes"; or using a counter word as in "in groups of two" or "two pieces to a ...". Examples include "Please get off the bus one by one so no one falls.", "She jumped up the steps two at a time.", "Students worked in the lab in twos and threes.", "Students worked in groups of two and three.", and "Students worked two people to a team."
The suffixes ''-some'' (as in ''twosome'', ''threesome'') and ''-fold'' (as in ''two-fold'', ''three-fold'') are also used, though also relatively infrequently. For musical groups ''solo'', ''duo'', ''trio'', ''quartet'', etc. are commonly used, and ''pair'' is used for a group of two.
A conspicuous use of distributive numbers is in
arity
In logic, mathematics, and computer science, arity () is the number of arguments or operands taken by a function, operation or relation. In mathematics, arity may also be called rank, but this word can have many other meanings. In logic and ...
or
adicity, to indicate how many parameters a function takes. Most commonly this uses Latin distributive numbers and ''-ary'', as in ''unary'', ''binary'', ''ternary'', but sometimes Greek numbers are used instead, with ''-adic'', as in ''monadic'', ''dyadic'', ''triadic''.
Other languages
Georgian, Latin, and Romanian are notable languages with distributive numerals; see
Romanian distributive numbers. An example of this difference can be seen with the distributive number for 'one hundred'. While the cardinal number is 'centum', the distributive form is "centēnī,-ae, a".
In
Japanese numerals The are numerals that are used in Japanese. In writing, they are the same as the Chinese numerals, and large numbers follow the Chinese style of grouping by 10,000. Two pronunciations are used: the Sino-Japanese () readings of the Chinese char ...
, distributive forms are formed regularly from a cardinal number, a counter word, and the suffix , as in {{Nihongo, , 一人ずつ, hitori-zutsu, one person at a time, one person each.
In
Bisayan languages
The Bisayan languages or Visayan languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages spoken in the Philippines. They are most closely related to Tagalog and the Bikol languages, all of which are part of the Central Philippine languages. Mo ...
, notably
Cebuano,
Hiligaynon, and
Waray, distributive numbers are formed by adding the prefix ''tag-'' on the cardinal number, as in ''tagpito'' (seven of each) and ''tag-upat'' (four of each). In Cebuano, some distributive forms undergo
metathesis or
syncope, such as ''tagsa'' (from ''tag-usa''), ''tagurha'' (from ''tagduha''), ''tagutlo'' (from ''tagtulo''), and ''tagilma'' (from ''taglima'').
In
Turkish, one of the -ar/-er
suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns and adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can ca ...
es (chosen according to
vowel harmony
In phonology, vowel harmony is a phonological rule in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – must share certain distinctive features (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is typically long distance, meaning tha ...
) is added to the end of a cardinal numeral, as in "bir''er''" (one of each) and "dokuz''ar''" (nine of each). If the numeral ends with a vowel, a letter
ş comes to the middle; as in "iki''şer''" (two of each) and "altı''şar''" (six of each).
See also
*
Cardinal number
In mathematics, a cardinal number, or cardinal for short, is what is commonly called the number of elements of a set. In the case of a finite set, its cardinal number, or cardinality is therefore a natural number. For dealing with the cas ...
*
Ordinal number
In set theory, an ordinal number, or ordinal, is a generalization of ordinal numerals (first, second, th, etc.) aimed to extend enumeration to infinite sets.
A finite set can be enumerated by successively labeling each element with the leas ...
References
* Gil, David. 2013
Distributive numerals In: Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.) The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Accessed on 2019-07-23.
Numerals