[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/meyer-2020-many-systems-one-strategy-acquiring/)

[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [docs](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/) / [papers](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/) / [English](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/en/) / Many systems, one strategy: Acquiring ordinals in Dutch and English

# Many systems, one strategy: Acquiring ordinals in Dutch and English

**Authors:** Caitlin Meyer, Sjef Barbiers, Fred Weerman · **Year:** 2020 · **Venue:** Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 5(1) **Link:** [glossa-journal.org/article/id/5348](https://www.glossa-journal.org/article/id/5348/) (DOI [10.5334/gjgl.595](https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.595)) · **Licence:** [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

[**6** citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=cites:W3092925473) openalex · 2026-10-18[Glossa: a journal of general linguistics](https://openalex.org/S4210226983)[licence](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

- [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.595)
- [PDF](https://www.glossa-journal.org/article/5348/galley/12962/download)
- [DOI 10.5334/gjgl.595](https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.595)
- [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W3092925473)

**Authors (3)**

1. [Caitlin Meyer](https://openalex.org/A5044320154) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4868-3846) · h 5 · 32 citations · 22 works
2. [Sjef Barbiers](https://openalex.org/A5056044560) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4983-7472) · h 23 · 1592 citations · 147 works
3. [Fred Weerman](https://openalex.org/A5004960627) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8732-8524) · h 24 · 1983 citations · 180 works

Citations and author metrics from openalex (2026-10-18); authors with the same name are not always told apart.

## What it is about

The paper asks whether children learn ordinal numbers (*second, third, vierde*) by a rule or item by item. Two "Give-N" comprehension tasks are run. Seventy Dutch children (aged 2;08 to 4;11) are tested on synthetic ordinals (*vierde*), analytic ordinals (*auto vier*, "car four") and an irregular form (*derde* "third"); 35 American English children (aged 3;3 to 5;3) do the same test with English forms. The results point to a rule. Children who know the cardinal principle (CP-knowers) find regular ordinals more easily than irregular ones in both languages, and analytic forms are no harder than synthetic ones. English regular ordinals are answered correctly about 60% of the time, while *second*, *third* and *fifth* are below 50%. The authors apply Yang's Tolerance Principle: with five ordinals and three exceptions, the English rule is still productive (the threshold for N = 5 is 3.1). English learners answer less accurately than Dutch learners overall, and the authors attribute this to the greater number of exceptions. Ordinals are learned differently from cardinals, which follow a slower, item-by-item pattern.

## Ideas

- I1. Implement the Tolerance Principle as a gate in `en/src/morph.rs`: for each candidate suffix over N lexical items, count exceptions e and adopt the rule if e is at most N divided by ln N. Output the N, e, threshold and the decision, with BTreeMap order over the candidates.
- I2. Check the gate on the English ordinals: for growing N, count the exceptions to *-th* among the first N ordinals (*first, second, third, fifth*, and spelling changes such as *ninth, twelfth*) and report the smallest N at which the gate adopts *-th*. Compare that point with the paper's acquisition findings for English.
- I3. Regularity as a feature of the ordinal lookup: mark each ordinal as regular or irregular, and report the accuracy of the ordinal analysis on each class separately. The paper predicts regular > irregular and no difference between analytic and synthetic forms, so that is the expected pattern.
- I4. Negative control: a suffix whose exceptions dominate (the English strong past forms) must be rejected by the gate. If the gate adopts it, the threshold is wrong.

## For Mova

The chapters are [12. Pronouns, determiners and numerals](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en/12-pronouns-determiners-numerals/) (cardinals, ordinals and superlatives such as *first*), [17. Derivation II: suffixes](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en/17-derivation-suffixes/) (productive suffixes such as *-th*) and [14. Irregular verbs](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en/14-irregular-verbs/) (exceptions to a productive rule). The code is `en/src/morph.rs` (inflection and derivation rules), with the Tolerance gate as a small addition there, and `en/src/dict.rs` (the ordinal entries). The measures: the gate's decision and counts on the English ordinal list (run twice to confirm identical output), and the ordinal analysis accuracy by regularity class, compared with the paper's pattern.

## Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. [DOI 10.5334/gjgl.595](https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.595)

```
@article{meyer2020many,
  title = {{Many systems, one strategy: Acquiring ordinals in Dutch and English}},
  author = {Meyer, Caitlin and Barbiers, Sjef and Weerman, Fred},
  journal = {Glossa: a journal of general linguistics},
  year = {2020},
  doi = {10.5334/gjgl.595},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.595}
}
```

- [← previous Detecting Syntactic Change Using a Neural Part-of-Speech Tagger](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/merrill-2019-detecting-syntactic-change-neural-part/)
- [next → ISO-Standard Domain-Independent Dialogue Act Tagging for Conversational Agents](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/mezza-2018-iso-standard-domain-independent-dialogue/)
- [↑ back to English](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/en/)

## References

41 references, 1 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

1. Almoammer, Alhanouf, Jessica Sullivan, Chris Donlan, Franc Marušič, Rok Žaucer, Timothy O’Donnell & David Barner. 2013. Grammatical morphology as a source of early number word meanings. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110. 18448–18453. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1313652110 [↗](https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1313652110)
2. Anderson, Stephen Robert. 1969. West Scandinavian vowel systems and the ordering of phonological rules. Cambridge, MA: MIT PhD dissertation. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Anderson%2C+Stephen+Robert%2E+1969%2E+West+Scandinavian+vowel+systems+and+the+ordering+of+phonological+rules%2E+Cambridge%2C+MA%3A+MIT+PhD+dissertation%2E)
3. Barbiers, Sjef. 2007. Indefinite numerals one and many and the cause of ordinal suppletion. Lingua 117. 859–880. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2006.03.003 [↗](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2006.03.003)
4. Barner, David, Amanda Libenson, Pierina Cheung & Mayu Takasaki. 2009. Cross-linguistic relations between quantifiers and numerals in language acquisition: Evidence from Japanese. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 103. 421–440. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2008.12.001 Bates, Douglas, Martin Maechler, Ben Bolker & Steve Walker. 2015. Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software 67(1). 1–48. DOI: https://doi. org/10.18637/jss.v067.i01 Blom, Elma & Siebe de Korte. 2008. De verwerving van het Nederlands: Dummies en Verb Second. [The acquisition of Dutch: Dummies and Verb Second.] Nederlandse Taalkunde 13(2). 133–159. [↗](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2008.12.001)
5. Clark, Eve V. 2014. Acquisition of derivational morphology. In Rochelle Lieber & Pavel Štekauer (eds.), The Oxford handbook of derivational morphology, 1–21. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Clark%2C+Eve+V%2E+2014%2E+Acquisition+of+derivational+morphology%2E+In+Rochelle+Lieber+%26+Pavel+%C5%A0tekauer+%28eds%2E%29%2C+The+Oxford+handbook+of+derivational+morphology%2C+1%E2%80%9321%2E+Oxford%3A+Oxford+University+Press%2E)
6. Colomé, Àngels & Marie-Pascale Noël. 2012. One first? Acquisition of the cardinal and ordinal uses of numbers in preschoolers. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 133. 233–247. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2012.03.005 [↗](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2012.03.005)
7. Condry, Kirsten F. & Elizabeth S. Spelke. 2008. The development of language and abstract concepts: The case of natural number. Journal of Experimental Psychology 137. 22–38. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.137.1.22 [↗](https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.137.1.22)
8. Corbett, Greville G. 1978. Universals in the syntax of cardinal numerals. Lingua 46(4). 355–368. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/0024-3841(78)90042-6 Davies, Mark. 2008-. The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA): 520 million words, 1990-present. Available online at http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/. [↗](https://doi.org/10.1016/0024-3841(78)90042-6)
9. De Belder, Marijke. 2007. Silence and the construct state in Dutch date expressions. In Bettelou Los and Marjo van Koppen (eds.), Linguistics in the Netherlands 24. 25–35. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/avt.24.05de [↗](https://doi.org/10.1075/avt.24.05de)
10. De Belder, Marijke. 2009. On the syntax of titles. Paper presented at The 17th Conference of Student Organization of Linguistics in Europe (ConSOLE XVII), Nova Gorica, January 16–18, 2009. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=De+Belder%2C+Marijke%2E+2009%2E+On+the+syntax+of+titles%2E+Paper+presented+at+The+17th+Conference+of+Student+Organization+of+Linguistics+in+Europe+%28ConSOLE+XVII%29%2C+Nova+Gorica%2C+January+16%E2%80%9318%2C+2009%2E)
11. Dehaene, Stanislas & Jacques Mehler 1992. Cross-linguistic regularities in the frequency of number words. Cognition 43. 1–29. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(92) 90030-L Fischer, Florence E. & Robert D. Beckey. 1990. Beginning kindergartners perception of number. Perceptual and Motor Skills 70. 419–425. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2466/pms. 1990.70.2.419 Geary, David C. & Alex M. Moore. 2016. Cognitive and brain systems underlying early mathematical development. Progress in Brain Research 227. 75–103. DOI: https://doi. org/10.1016/bs.pbr.2016.03.008 Gelman, Rochel & Charles Randy Gallistel. 1978. The child’s understanding of number. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Second edition: 1986.) Hamburger, Henry & Stephen Crain. 1984. Acquisition of cognitive compiling. Cognition 17. 85–136. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(84)90015-5 [↗](https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(92)​)
12. Huang, Yi Ting, Elizabeth S. Spelke & Jesse Snedeker. 2010. When is four far more than three? Children’s generalization of newly acquired number words. Psychological Science 21. 600–606. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610363552 [↗](https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610363552)
13. Hurford, James. 1987. Language and number. The emergence of a cognitive system. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Hurford%2C+James%2E+1987%2E+Language+and+number%2E+The+emergence+of+a+cognitive+system%2E+Oxford%3A+Basil+Blackwell%2E)
14. Kiparsky, Paul. 1973. Elsewhere in phonology. In Stephen Robert Anderson & Paul Kiparsky (eds.), A festschrift for Morris Halle, 93–106. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Kiparsky%2C+Paul%2E+1973%2E+Elsewhere+in+phonology%2E+In+Stephen+Robert+Anderson+%26+Paul+Kiparsky+%28eds%2E%29%2C+A+festschrift+for+Morris+Halle%2C+93%E2%80%93106%2E+New+York%3A+Holt%2C+Rinehart+and+Winston%2E)
15. Le Corre, Mathieu, Gretchen Van de Walle, Elizabeth M. Brannon & Susan Carey. 2006. Re-visiting the competence/performance debate in the acquisition of counting as a representation of the positive integers. Cognitive Psychology 52. 130–169. DOI: https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.cogpsych.2005.07.002 Le Corre, Mathieu, Peggy Li, Becky H. Huang, Gisela Jia & Susan Carey. 2016. Numerical syntax supports number word learning: Evidence from a comparison of young Mandarin and English learners. Cognitive Psychology 88. 162–186. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j. cogpsych.2016.06.003 Le Corre, Mathieu & Susan Carey. 2007. One, two, three, four, nothing more: An investigation of the conceptual sources of the verbal counting principles. Cognition 105. 395–438. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2006.10.005 [↗](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogpsych.2005.07.002)
16. Lee, Michael & Barbara Sarnecka. 2010a. A model of knower-level behavior in number concept development. Cognitive Science 34(1). 51–67. DOI: https://doi.org/10. 1111/j.1551-6709.2009.01063.x Lee, Michael & Barbara Sarnecka. 2010b. Number-knower levels in young children: insights from Bayesian modeling. Cognition 120(3). 391–402. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j. cognition.2010.10.003 Lyons, Ian M., Stephen E. Vogel & Daniel Ansari. 2016. On the ordinality of numbers: A review of neural and behavioral studies. Progress in Brain Research 227. 187–221. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.pbr.2016.04.010 [↗](https://doi.org/10.)
17. Marcus, Gary P., Steven Pinker, Michael Ullman, Michelle Hollander, T. John Rosen & Fei Xu. 1992. Overregularization in language acquisition. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 57(4). 1–78. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/1166115 [↗](https://doi.org/10.2307/1166115)
18. Matthei, Edward. 1982. The acquisition of prenominal modifier sequences. Cognition 11. 301–332. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(82)90018-X [↗](https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(82)90018-x)
19. Meyer, Caitlin. 2019. Rule and order: acquiring ordinals in Dutch and English. PhD Dissertation, University of Amsterdam. Utrecht: LOT Publications. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Meyer%2C+Caitlin%2E+2019%2E+Rule+and+order%3A+acquiring+ordinals+in+Dutch+and+English%2E+PhD+Dissertation%2C+University+of+Amsterdam%2E+Utrecht%3A+LOT+Publications%2E)
20. Meyer, Caitlin, Sjef Barbiers & Fred Weerman. 2016. Order and ordinality: the acquisition of cardinals and ordinals in Dutch. In Jennifer Scott & Deb Waughtal (eds.), Proceedings of the 40th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, 253–266. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Meyer%2C+Caitlin%2C+Sjef+Barbiers+%26+Fred+Weerman%2E+2016%2E+Order+and+ordinality%3A+the+acquisition+of+cardinals+and+ordinals+in+Dutch%2E+In+Jennifer+Scott+%26+Deb+Waughtal+%28eds%2E%29%2C+Proceedings+of+the+40th+annual+Bo)
21. Meyer, Caitlin, Sjef Barbiers & Fred Weerman. 2018. Ordinals are not as easy as one, two, three: the acquisition of cardinals and ordinals in Dutch. Language Acquisition. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10489223.2017.1391266 Meyer, Caitlin, Sjef Barbiers & Fred Weerman. Under review. Rules rule in Dutch L1 ordinal comprehension and production. Ms. University of Amsterdam, Leiden University. [↗](https://doi.org/10.1080/10489223.2017.1391266)
22. Miller, Kevin F., Susan M. Major, Hua Shu & Houcan Zhang. 2000. Ordinal knowledge: Number names and number concepts in Chinese and English. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology 54(2). 129–139. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/h0087335 [↗](https://doi.org/10.1037/h0087335)
23. Negen, James & Barbara W. Sarnecka 2012. Number-concept acquisition and general vocabulary development. Child Development 83(6). 2019–2027. DOI: https://doi.org/ 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2012.01815.x [↗](https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2012.01815.x)
24. Negen, James, Barbara W. Sarnecka & Michael D. Lee. 2012. An Excel sheet for inferring children’s number-knower levels from give-N data. Behavior Research Methods 44(1). 57–66. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-011-0134-4 [↗](https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-011-0134-4)
25. Oostdijk, Nelleke. 2000. Het corpus gesproken Nederlands. [The spoken Dutch corpus.] Nederlandse Taalkunde 5(3). 280-284. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Oostdijk%2C+Nelleke%2E+2000%2E+Het+corpus+gesproken+Nederlands%2E+%5BThe+spoken+Dutch+corpus%2E%5D+Nederlandse+Taalkunde+5%283%29%2E+280%2D284%2E)
26. Piantadosi, Steven T., Julian Jara-Ettinger & Edward Gibson. 2014. Children’s learning of number words in an indigenous farming-foraging group. Developmental Science 17(4). 553–563. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12078 [↗](https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12078)
27. Pinker, Steven. 1999. Words and rules. New York, NY: Harper Perennial. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Pinker%2C+Steven%2E+1999%2E+Words+and+rules%2E+New+York%2C+NY%3A+Harper+Perennial%2E)
28. R Core Team. 2016. A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. [http://www.R-project.org/](http://www.R-project.org/). [↗](http://www.R-project.org/)
29. Rumelhart, David E. & Donald A. Norman. 1978. Accretion, tuning and restructuring: Three modes of learning. In John W. Cotton & Roberta L. Klatzky (eds.), Semantic factors in cognition, 37–53. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Rumelhart%2C+David+E%2E+%26+Donald+A%2E+Norman%2E+1978%2E+Accretion%2C+tuning+and+restructuring%3A+Three+modes+of+learning%2E+In+John+W%2E+Cotton+%26+Roberta+L%2E+Klatzky+%28eds%2E%29%2C+Semantic+factors+in+cognition%2C+37%E2%80%9353%2E+Hillsda)
30. Sarnecka, Barbara W. 2015. Learning to represent exact numbers. Synthese. 1–18. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0854-6 [↗](https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0854-6)
31. Sarnecka, Barbara W., Valentina G. Kamenskaya, Yuko Yamana, Tamiko Ogura & Yulia Yudovina. 2007. From grammatical number to exact numbers: Early meanings of one, two, and three in English, Russian and Japanese. Cognitive Psychology 55(2). 136–168. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogpsych.2006.09.001 [↗](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogpsych.2006.09.001)
32. Siloni, Tal. 1994. Noun phrases and nominalizations. Geneva: University of Geneva PhD dissertation. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Siloni%2C+Tal%2E+1994%2E+Noun+phrases+and+nominalizations%2E+Geneva%3A+University+of+Geneva+PhD+dissertation%2E)
33. Sleeman, Petra & Aafke Hulk. 2013. L1 acquisition of noun ellipsis in French and Dutch: Consequences for linguistic theory. In Sergio Baauw, Frank Drijkoningen, Luisa Meroni & Manuela Pinto (eds.), Romance languages and linguistic theory, 249–266. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.5.12sle [↗](https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.5.12sle)
34. Syrett, Kristen. 2016. Acquisition of comparatives and degree constructions. In Jeffrey Lidz, William Snyder & Joe Pater (eds.), The Oxford handbook of developmental linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/978019960 1264.013.20 Trabandt, Corinna, Alexander Thiel, Emanuela Sanfelici & Petra Schulz. 2015. On the acquisition of ordinal numbers in German. In Esther Ruigendijk & Cornelia Hamann (eds.), Proceedings of GALA 2013, 521–532. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge Scholar Publishing. [↗](https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/978019960​)
35. Wynn, Karen. 1992. Children’s acquisition of the number words and the counting system. Cognitive Psychology 24. 220–251. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(92)90008-P [↗](https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(92)90008-p)
36. Yang, Charles. 2016. The price of linguistic productivity. How children learn to break the rules of language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/ 9780262035323.001.0001 Zuckerman, Shalom. 2001. The acquisition of “optional” movement. PhD Dissertation, University of Groningen. Groningen: Groningen Dissertations in Linguistics (GRODIL). [↗](https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/​)
37. How to cite this article: Meyer, Caitlin, Sjef Barbiers and Fred Weerman. 2020. Many systems, one strategy: Acquiring ordinals in Dutch and English. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 5(1): 100. 1–31. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/ gjgl.595 [↗](https://doi.org/10.5334/) [our card](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/meyer-2020-many-systems-one-strategy-acquiring/)
38. Submitted: 19 December 2017 [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Submitted%3A+19+December+2017)
39. Accepted: 02 January 2020 [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Accepted%3A+02+January+2020)
40. Published: 12 October 2020 [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Published%3A+12+October+2020)
41. Copyright: © 2020 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Glossa: a journal of general linguistics is a peer-reviewed open access journal published by Ubiquity Press. OPEN ACCESS [↗](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)