250 CHAPTER 5. COUNTERS AND COUNTING
17th house after you turn left”:
”My parents live at number seventeen.””My parents are the seventeenth door (from some obvious reference
point,like the start of the block, or from the floor’s staircase).”
- Ordinality
This is technically not a counter, but can be added to rank counters to in-
dicate ordinality – that is, it indicates an item’s position in some ordered
set. Being very specific: adding to a counter changes the count form a
cardinalnumber toordinalnumber.
For instance, it can be used in combination with to create the
counter , changing the meaning from ”... days” or ”day ... of the
month” to ”the ...th day (relative to some arbitrary time)”:
”We stayed at the hotel for three days.””We stayed at a hotel on the third day.”It’s also frequently combined with to create the counter
,
which changes the meaning from a number in a ranking, to number of
appearance. For instance, a runner with the back number ”214” could be
the first person to start in a relay, in which case the runner himself would
be indicated using 214 (or 214 ) but would also
be the , because he’s the first runner.
Another example of this difference can be shown in the context of
waiting for a bus:
”Please take the no. 5 bus at this bus stop.””Please take the fifth bus at this bus stop.”