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Linguistically, I believe that the Californian usage (e.g., "the 5") is an elliptical construction -- i.e., it's a truncated form of "the 5 freeway".
by pklausler 9y ago
Linguistically, I believe that the Californian usage (e.g., "the 5") is an elliptical construction -- i.e., it's a truncated form of "the 5 freeway".
- cassowary 9y agoWell, what's "Take 5"? I mean, five is being used as an ordinal not a cardinal. Normally, to give an ordinal sense to a normal number you need to follow some noun. So "Chapter 3", "Level 8", "Freeway 5". And then we're not specifying what kind of thing it is, so "Take 5". Btw. It's nice if you omit the word "linguistically". It's good to remember that just because you speak a language, that's not the same as being an expert on language science. Any more than because you inhabit a body, you're an expert on physics.