Categorial status of ordinals

[BrettRey]

This is probably a wild goose chase, but could ordinals be always nouns and never adjectives? The only Adj-like property is Mod in NP (but could be a Nom) and pred comp (but could be a non-count singular noun. Consider *He arrived closely second. Even the very in very first is the very in the very man I needed rather than in very good.

Their derivational morphology is the same as fractional, which are nouns, and unlike any adj. They share no inflectional morphology with Adjs.

Maybe I need to sleep.

[nschneid]

first seems like it should have the same category as last

[BrettRey]

I does, though first is obviously a bit unusual being from foremost instead of from one.

I guess the other thing is that the ordinals, like other adjectives take -ly to make adverbs.