In the present chapter – the final chapter of this book – I want to discuss in more detail the expressions that denote number concepts. The reason why these expressions appeared in our discussion thus far was mainly that we had to make clear the distinction between non-referential counting words (our numerical tools) and referential number words (expressions for numerical concepts). In the first part of this chapter, I work out this distinction in some more detail. On this basis, the other sections will then be dedicated to the question of what referential number word constructions can tell us about the relationship between numbers and language.

In the second section we will investigate how the organisation of number word constructions relates to the organisation of numerical concepts. In this context we will see that some constructions can be used for ordinal and nominal reference alike. I show that our account of number contexts allows us to relate this overlap to structural similarities between ordinal and nominal number assignments.

In the third section of this chapter, I look into the grammatical status of referential number words. I show that cardinals (‘four pens’), ordinals (‘the fourth runner’) and ‘#’-constructions (constructions like ‘bus number four’) share grammatical features with different kinds of non-numerical expressions, namely with quantifiers like ‘few’ and ‘many’, with superlatives like ‘the fastest’, and with proper names like ‘Karen’, respectively.