Words for numbers, numerals, are a special lexical class, half-way be-
tween natural and mathematical language. One would expect them
to have a relatively straightforward semantics. However, during the
last several decades, numerals proved to be a rich source of debate in
linguistics, especially in semantics and pragmatics. The reason is that
the study of numerals requires taking into account core issues such as
plurality, quantification, implicature/exhaustivity, degree, modality,
imprecision and cross-linguistic variation. In this article, we provide
a thorough introduction to the issues connected to numeral semantics
and pragmatics. We gradually develop analyses of meanings of nu-
merals in natural language using a multitude of analytical tools. We
evaluate the competing proposals in terms of empirical coverage and
predictions.