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He's taller than the other two.
One factory of the four has already been idled in the town.
'Two' and 'four' in these sentences are still grammatically numerals and they took articles, right?
The articles in the sentences are not linked to some omitted phantom nouns, are they ('the other two [boys]', 'of the four [factories]')?
So what is the complete list of parts of speech that can take articles (not just be next to them)? Is it only nouns, numerals, and pronouns ('the one who...')?
First, you are discussing numbers, which are mental concepts, rather than numerals, which are symbols.
Second, a number can apply directly only to nouns or pronouns. It can be applied indirectly to verbs as in
He fell down on the ice three times
Notice that "three" is syntactically applied to the noun "times," but the sense of the phrase relates to the verb.
Third, in the cases that you are referring to, we have ellipsis: the relevant noun is dropped. For example, assuming that previous context makes clear that we are talking about boys rather than giraffes,
He is taller than the other two boys
gets shortened to
He is taller than the other two
"Phantom noun" is a nice phrase.
For the issue of when the article is needed, please see the indicated reference.
