A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Languages c8.2

c8.2

IN the Dravidian languages each of the cardinal numbers presents itself to us in a twofold shape. The first and probably the more primitive form is that of numeral adjectives; the second and more largely used is that of numeral substantives, or neuter nouns of number. The numeral adverbs (twice, thrice, &c.), and also the distributive numerals (by twos, by threes, &c.), are formed from the numeral adjectives; whilst the ordinal numbers (second, third, &c.) are formed from the abstract numeral nouns.