4.3.2. Floating numerals
A floating numeral is a numeral that does not appear in its canonical position since it is not close to the noun it modifies. In other words, there is a split between the noun and the numeral. This syntactic construction is attested in LIS.
To illustrate, consider the noun phrase book three. The separation between these two elements can be observed in a sentence with topicalisation (PRAGMATICS 4.2), namely a sentence in which a topical constituent accompanied by marked non-manuals is preposed to a sentence-initial position. As shown in the example below, the noun (book) is topicalised at the beginning of the sentence and the related cardinal (three) is stranded in a non-adjacent position, after the verb.
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book ix1 want three
‘I want three books.’
If the noun phrase also includes an adjective, this accompanies the topicalised noun, rather than the stranded cardinal. The example below shows the distribution of the adjective red and the cardinal three with respect to the noun to which they both refer.
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book red ix1 want three
‘I want three red books.’
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