Are numbers adjectives, nouns or pronouns?

[nq:1]Joe: "How many people arrived today?" Bill: "Sixteen were seen entering". If the sentence is proper, sixteen must be a ... However, is sixteen a noun or a pronoun because in this context it substitutes for the previous explicit noun, people.[/nq]
It is an adjective modifying the elided term "persons":

Sixteen (persons) were seen entering.(1)
English allows us to drop words w

[nq:2]Joe: "How many people arrived today?" Bill: "Sixteen were seen ... this context it substitutes for the previous explicit noun, people.[/nq]
[nq:1]It is an adjective modifying the elided term "persons": Sixteen (persons) were seen entering.(1) English allows us to drop words when their implied presence is inescapable: that dropping is called ellipsis. [/nq]
Yeah, uh-huh.
"Big were

[nq:2] It is an adjective modifying the elided term "persons": ... implied presence is inescapable: that dropping is called ellipsis. [/nq]
[nq:1]Yeah, uh-huh. "Big were seen entering." "Ugly were seen entering." See your error now? Those examples show that "sixteen" is NOT an adjective. Attributive numbers are determiners, like "those," "many," "his", etc. \\P. Schultz[/nq]
Actually, I'd

[nq:1] Eric was speaking in terms of traditional grammar, which doesn't include a part of speech called a "determiner." [/nq]
And to show that it is an adjective, he used an example (elipsis) that, together with my analogous examples, clearly showed that it ISN'T an adjective.
If he wants it to be an adjective, that's fine. But in so asserting it would be a good idea to choose examples tha

[nq:2]Joe: "How many people arrived today?" Bill: "Sixteen were seen ... this context it substitutes for the previous explicit noun, people.[/nq]
[nq:1]It is an adjective modifying the elided term "persons": Sixteen (persons) were seen entering.(1) English allows us to drop words ... last book"). If five people enter a room and four people leave it, what does the room hold? One peop?[/nq]

[nq:2]English allows us to drop words when their implied presence ... accordingly liable to great abuse. As Wilson Follett put it,[/nq]
[nq:1]This means we can end a sentence in a preposition if the object of the preposition has an impled, inescapable presence.[/nq]
Of course. I have never seen a participant in this group deny that.

It also means that we can end a sentence in a pr

[nq:1] This means we can end a sentence in a preposition if the object of the preposition has an impled, inescapable presence.[/nq]
Yeah, like if the person shows up in a prisoner's suit, he can say "I've just come from." There is no need for him to say he has come from prison, because that is obvious.
I assume that's what you meant?
\\P. Schultz

[nq:2] This means we can end a sentence in a preposition if the object of the preposition has an impled, inescapable presence.[/nq]
[nq:1]Yeah, like if the person shows up in a prisoner's suit, he can say "I've just come from." There is no need for him to say he has come from prison, because that is obvious. I assume that's what you meant?[/nq]
My late mother-in-law used to ask me if I wan

[nq:1] My late mother-in-law used to ask me if I wanted "to go with." Blame it on her Yiddish. [/nq]
They say that in Pennsylvania too. Same ultimate Teutonic source, I assume.
\\P. Schultz

[nq:1]In fact, however, only a tiny number of English-speakers has any idea what either one of those is, while most literate people know about adjectives, so what I'd really call the "sixteen" is an adjective. In other words, for practical purposes Eric is right.[/nq]
Madam, let me congratulate you on your guts. The number of persons who would dare use "has" with "a number" is become vanishing