Any Individual ls File size limit?

[Hart Larry]

Well, last year, actually yesterday, I had an unusual freeze, as I did a paste 
in speakup.  Now, while grabbing articles in trn to a single file, I do an
ls -l
Once it reaches 2147483647   the number never increases, even though it 
continues to say its appending articles.  I have another 35GB file from last 
week which does display its larger size.
So is their some kind of single file limit in Debian testing, or is this caused 
by an unusual shutdown?
I remember in DOS when examining available space, it was never larger than 
2.147GB.
Thanks in advance for any guidance or any packages I need to grab
Hart