numeral classifiers in chinese

XuPing LiNumeral Classifiers in Chinese

Trends in LinguisticsStudies and Monographs 250

EditorVolker Gast

Editorial Board

Walter BisangJan Terje FaarlundHans Henrich HockNatalia LevshinaHeiko NarrogMatthias SchlesewskyAmir ZeldesNiina Ning Zhang

Editors responsible for this volume

Walter BisangNiina Ning Zhang

De Gruyter Mouton

Numeral Classifiersin ChineseThe Syntax-Semantics Interface

by

XuPing Li

De Gruyter Mouton

ISBN 978-3-11-028763-9e-ISBN 978-3-11-028933-6ISSN 1861-4302

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This book is dedicated solely to my beloved late mother Xu Yinfeng (06/09/195927/10/2012), for her deep love in the past thirty years.

30

Preface

This book has grown out of my 2011 dissertation, entitled On the seman-tics of classifiers in Chinese (Bar Ilan University, 2011). The book is a substantial revision of the dissertation, incorporates both the research for the dissertation and the results of my work on classifiers in the years 2011- 2013. Three new chapters, namely, Chapter 2, Chapter 4 and Chapter 10, have been added to the original dissertation. Specifically, Chapter 4 on natural atomicity was presented at the workshop on Mass/count in linguis-tics, philosophy and cognitive science at ENS, Paris in Dec 2012. Chapter 10 is based on my talk at the workshop on Semantic and typological pers-pectives on definite in Dsseldorf in June 2012. In the meantime, a differ-ent version of Chapter 8 is published as Li and Rothstein (2012) in Lan-guage and Linguistics. Chapter 9 is a development of Li and Bisang (2012) in Lingua.

In this book, I discuss both syntax and semantics of classifiers in Chi-nese. My knowledge of semantics comes directly from Susan Rothstein, who has been guiding and supporting me since we met in 2006. I am grate-ful to her for what she has done for me at every stage of my career. Both Greg Carlson and Fred Landman deserve special thanks. Greg, as one of the referees of my dissertation in 2010, gave me many constructive com-ments, which lead to great improvement of my dissertation. Fred read the whole manuscript and edited and commented on it in the spring of 2011, resulting in a much improved final version. I also appreciated Freds cut-ting-ins during my appointments with Susan at their home. I thank them both very much for their contribution to my work on classifiers. I should also like to thank Victor Pan, the conversations with whom always make me think carefully about the question of how much syntax is needed for my semantics for Chinese classifiers.

Ive worked in Israel, German and France since 2006. I thank everybody at the institutions I worked in, in particular, my Israeli teachers: Gabi Da-non, Edit Doron, Yael Greenberg, Nirit Kadmon, Fred Landman, Susan Rothstein, and my German linguistic circle: Walter Bisang, Franziska Kretzschmar, Yuchen Hung, Matthias Schlesewsky, Luming Wang, and the linguists in Paris: Hilary Chappell (and members in her Sinotype Project), Katia Chirkova, Redouane Djamouri, Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin, David Ni-

viii Preface

colas, Victor Pan, Alain Peyraube, Paul Waltraud. Thanks also goes to Lisa Cheng, James Huang, Rint Sybesma, Dylan Tsai, Niina Zhang.

I would also take this opportunity to acknowledge the financial support from various sources. Thanks to Bar-Ilan for the Presidential Fellowship (2006-2010), which allowed me to study at BIU. I also wish to thank Wal-ter Bisang for the financial support which made my visit possible in the academic year of 2008-2009 in Mainz, and for his guidance which allowed me to learn so much about the typology of classifiers. The revision of the book was conducted when I was a postdoc fellow in Hilary Chappells ERC-Sinotype Project in Paris. I thank her unconditional support during my stay in Paris.

Finally, very special thanks to the referee and to the editors of the series, Walter Bisang and Niina Zhang, for their helpful comments. I also thank my project/book editors Julie Miess and Wolfgang Konwitschny for their professional editorial guidance.

XuPing Li Paris, June 2013

Contents

Preface .......................................................................................................... v Abbreviations ............................................................................................. xv

Chapter 1 Introduction ................................................................................................ 1 1. Issues .................................................................................................. 1 1.1. Issue 1: the debate on a count/mass distinction in Mandarin ............ 1 1.2. Issue 2: counting and measuring functions of classifiers .................. 2 1.3. Issue 3: definiteness in classifier languages ...................................... 3 2. Data and source .................................................................................. 4 3. Structure of the book ......................................................................... 6

Part I: The debate on a count/mass distinction in Chinese

Chapter 2 Defing classifiers ...................................................................................... 13 1. Chinese classifiers: an illustration ................................................... 13 1.1. Identifying classifiers syntactically ................................................. 13 1.2. Chinese classifiers: a heuristic classification .................................. 16 2. Classifiers as a closed class ............................................................. 21 3. Classifiers without descriptive content ........................................ 23 3.1. Classifiers are not nominal .............................................................. 23 3.2. Classifiers have no descriptive content ......................................... 28 4. Classifiers are complement-taking ................................................... 30 5. Classifiers as stressless .................................................................... 32 6. Classifiers in English: a contrastive look ........................................ 33 7. Conclusions ...................................................................................... 41

Chapter 3 The count/mass distinction in Chinese revisited ................................... 42 1. Introduction ...................................................................................... 42 2. Syntactic distinction between count and mass classifiers ............... 44 2.1. Introduction to count/mass classifiers ............................................. 44 2.2. Lexical/functional distinction of classifiers .................................... 47 2.3. Two syntactic diagnostics ................................................................ 49

x Contents

3. Possibility of pre-classifier adjectival modification ........................ 55 3.1. Adjectives before count and mass classifiers .................................. 55 3.2. Two constraints on pre-classifier adjectives .................................... 59 4. Optionality of post-classifier de....................................................... 62 5. Conclusions ...................................................................................... 67

Chapter 4 Natural atomicity ..................................................................................... 68 1. Introduction ...................................................................................... 68 2. Countability and individuation ........................................................ 69 3. A lexical distinction between mass and count nouns ...................... 73 4. Individual, stuff and partial-object readings .................................... 77 5. Natural atomicity as a grammatically relevant phenomenon ........... 81 6. Conclusions ...................................................................................... 85

Chapter 5 Chinese bare nouns .................................................................................. 86 1. Introduction ...................................................................................... 86 2. The Krifka-Chierchia hypothesis ..................................................... 87 3. Bare nouns as kinds ......................................................................... 89 3.1. Strong kind-inducing contexts ......................................................... 89 3.2. Appositives ...................................................................................... 92 3.3. Scope with respect to opacity .......................................................... 93 3.4. Scope with respect to quantifiers ..................................................... 97 4. Semantics of bare nouns ................................................................ 101 5. Bare predication ............................................................................. 103 5.1. Some analyses of copula clauses ................................................... 104 5.1.1. Ambiguous BEs ............................................................................. 104 5.1.2. Unambiguous BE ........................................................................... 106 5.2. Post-copula bare nouns as predicates of individuals ..................... 108 5.3. Post-copula bare nouns as predicates of subkinds ......................... 112 5.4. Post-copula bare nouns as predicates of kinds .............................. 114 6. Definite bare nouns ........................................................................ 116 6.1. Topic-hood and definiteness .......................................................... 116 6.2. Definite bare nouns in object positions ......................................... 120 6.3. Semantics of definite bare nouns ................................................... 121

Contents xi

Part II: Functions of classifiers: counting and measuring

Chapter 6 Counting and measure functions of classifiers .................................... 127 1. Introduction .................................................................................... 127 2. Counting and measuring readings: a crosslinguistic perspective .. 129 2.1. Introducing counting and measuring readings ............................... 129 2.2. Structures for counting and measuring readings ........................... 133 3. Ambiguity of container classifiers in Chinese ............................... 135 3.1. Counting and measuring readings for Chinese container classifiers 135 3.2. The syntax of counting and measuring readings ........................... 140 4. A feature analysis of classifiers: [Counting, Measuring] .......... 143 4.1. Four types of classifiers ................................................................. 144 4.1.1. Type 1: [+C, -M] classifiers........................................................... 144 4.1.2. Type 2: [-C, +M] classifiers........................................................... 147 4.1.3. Type 3: [+C, +M] classifiers.......................................................... 148 4.1.4. Type 4: [-C, -M] classifiers............................................................ 150 4.1.5. Concluding remarks ....................................................................... 152 4.2. Syntactic support for the counting and measuring readings .......... 153 4.3. Semantic shifting between counting and measuring readings ....... 158 5. Semantics of classifiers: counting and measuring ......................... 161 5.1. Krifkas (1995) semantics for Chinese classifiers ......................... 162 5.2. Rothsteins (2010) semantics for English classifiers ..................... 164 5.3. Semantics of Chinese classifiers .................................................... 167 5.3.1. Semantics of classifiers in counting readings ................................ 167 5.3.2. Semantics for classifiers on the measure reading .......................... 171 6. Conclusions .................................................................................... 172

Chapter 7 Adjectival modification in classifier phrases: pre-classifier adjectives .................................................................................................................. 174 1. Introduction .................................................................................... 174 2. Licensing pre-classifier adjectives ................................................. 176 2.1. Pre-classifier adjectives before counting classifiers ...................... 176 2.2. Concrete portion reading (Partee and Borschev 2012) .............. 179 3. The modification relation of pre-classifier adjectives ................... 181 3.1. Adjectival modification in pseudo-partitives................................. 181 3.2. Pre-classifier adjectives in Mandarin ............................................ 183 3.2.1. Rejecting pre-classifier adjectives modifying mass classifiers ..... 184

xii Contents

3.2.2. Rejecting pre-classifier adjectives modifying nouns ..................... 186 4. Pre-classifier adjectives modifying Cl+N .................................. 189 4.1. Contexts of using pre-classifier adjectives .................................... 189 4.1.1. Consumption contexts.................................................................... 189 4.1.2. Contexts of significance ................................................................ 191 4.1.3. Contrastive contexts ....................................................................... 192 4.2. Syntactic structure ......................................................................... 193 5. Semantics of pre-classifier adjectives ............................................ 195 5.1. Introduction to expressives ......................................................... 195 5.2. Pre-classifier adjectives as expressives ......................................... 197 5.3. Pre-classifier adjectives and plurality ............................................ 200 6. Conclusions .................................................................................... 201

Chapter 8 Modification marker de in classifier phrases ...................................... 202 1. Introduction .................................................................................... 202 2. Licensing the post-classifier de ..................................................... 204 2.1. De with mass classifiers (Cheng and Sybesma 1998) ................... 206 2.2. Information weight (Tang 2005) ................................................ 209 2.3. The indeterminacy account (Hsieh 2008) ................................... 211 3. Unsolved problems (Li and Rothstein 2012) ................................. 214 4. Semantics of Num-measure Cl-de-N: as much as .......................... 216 4.1. Measure classifiers and the particle de .......................................... 216 4.2. Semantics of Num-Clmeasure-de-N ................................................... 218 5. Num-count Cl-de-N: as many as ................................................... 220 5.1. Counting classifiers in measure phrases ........................................ 221 5.2. Semantics of Num-Clcount-de-N ...................................................... 223 6. Conclusions: two puzzles about [+counting] classifiers................ 226

Part III: Definiteness in classifier languages

Chapter 9 Definite classifiers in southern Chinese languages ............................. 233 1. Introduction .................................................................................... 233 2. Cl+N in three Chinese languages ............................................... 236 2.1. Cl+N in Mandarin ...................................................................... 237 2.2. Cl+N in Wu ................................................................................ 240 2.2.1. Preverbal Cl+N ........................................................................... 240 2.2.2. Postverbal Cl+N ............................................................................. 242 2.3. Cl+N in Cantonese ..................................................................... 243

Contents xiii

3. Information structure and (in)definite Cl+N .............................. 245 4. Syntax of indefinite Cl+N .......................................................... 248 4.1. Indefinite Cl+N as a reduced form of one+Cl+N (L 1944) .. 248 4.2. Indefinite Cl+N as NumPs ......................................................... 249 4.3. Indefinite Cl+N as ClP ............................................................... 251 5. Syntax of definite Cl+N ............................................................. 254 5.1. From Dem+Cl+N to definite Cl+N ........................................ 255 5.2. Definite Cl+N as ClP ................................................................. 257 5.3. Definite Cl+N as DP .................................................................. 259 6. Semantic interpretation of Cl+N ................................................ 262 6.1. Cl+N with a counting reading .................................................... 262 6.2. Semantics of indefinite Cl+N ..................................................... 264 6.3. Semantics of definite Cl+N: from counting to definiteness-marking .................................................................................................... 266 6.3.1. A uniqueness-based approach of definiteness ............................... 266 6.3.2. A familiarity-based approach of definiteness ................................ 269 6.3.3. Semantics of definite Cl+N ........................................................ 273 7. Summary ........................................................................................ 274

Chapter 10 Definite classifiers and their modifiers ................................................ 275 1. Introduction to modified Cl+N ................................................... 275 2. Syntax of modified Cl+N in Wu ................................................ 277 2.1. Modified Cl+N as a definite expression .................................... 278 2.2. Modified Cl+N as DP ................................................................. 280 2.2.1. Definite classifiers as D head ........................................................ 280 2.2.2. Dems as [Spec DP] ........................................................................ 282 2.2.3. Adjs/RCs as [Spec DP] .................................................................. 284 3. Semantics of non-bare Cl+N ...................................................... 285 3.1. Definite classifiers characterized with familiarity ..................... 285 3.2. Interpret modified Cl-N compositionally ................................... 287 4. Concluding remarks ....................................................................... 290

References ................................................................................................ 291 Index ......................................................................................................... 307

Abbreviations

ACC accusative case

CL classifier

EXP experiential aspect

DUR durative aspect

FOC focus marker

GEN genitive case

MOD modification marker

NMLZ nominalizer

OM object marker PASS passive

PFV perfective

PL plural

PRF perfect

PROG progressive

PRT particle

SG singular

Chapter 1 Introduction

1. Issues

This book is a study on numeral classifiers in Chinese. It explores the grammatical properties of Chinese classifiers at the syntax-semantics inter-face. The core task of this study is to look into the question of how clas-sifiers are semantically interpreted in different syntactic contexts or how different semantic functions of classifiers are realized at the syntactic level. Its primary goal is to provide the missing semantic component in previous syntactically oriented works.

The following three issues will be explored in this research: (i) the de-bate on a count/mass distinction in Mandarin, (ii) counting and measuring functions of classifiers, and (iii) definiteness-marking in classifier languag-es.

1.1. Issue 1: the debate on a count/mass distinction in Mandarin

The first issue is concerned with the question of whether there is a lexical count/mass distinction in the nominal domain in Mandarin. There are three specific questions to be addressed:

(i) Can classifiers encode a count/mass distinction in Mandarin? In other words, is it plausible to posit a distinction between count and mass classifiers, as proposed in Cheng and Sybesma (1998)?

(ii) How to characterize the contrast between shui water and nanhai boy in Mandarin? Does it reflect a grammatical distinction be-tween mass and count nouns or simply an ontological distinction be-tween homogenity?

(iii) Are there mass-to-count (universal grinding) or count-to-mass (universal package) shiftings in Mandarin?

2 Introduction

To start with, I make a distinction between individuation and coun-tability (cf. Joosten 2003). Individuation is a cognitive and/or ontological notion. It refers to whether the referents denoted by nouns are (discrete) individuals or not. In contrast, countability is a grammatical notion. It re-fers to whether nouns can be directly counted by numerals or not. I take the position that the count/mass distinction is a grammatical phenomenon and it is thus related to the notion countability only. In view of that Chinese nouns cannot be directly combined with a numeral, they are all mass nouns (Krifka 1995, Chierchia 1998a, b).

As for the first question, I argue in chapter 3 that the distinction be-tween count and mass classifiers proposed by Cheng and Sybesma (1998) cannot be established in Mandarin. The syntactic diagnostics they suggest cannot be justified in making a dichotomy between count and mass classifiers and therefore, a contrast between count and mass nouns cannot be drawn. I argue in chapter 5 that all the Mandarin bare nouns are mass nouns and they denote kinds (see Chierchia 1998b, Yang 2001, Jiang 2012).

Concerning the second question, I find no morphosyntactic evidence available for a grammatical distinction between mass and count nouns in Mandarin. Contra Doetjes (1997), I claim that the contrast between shui water and nanhai boy simply reflects an ontological distinction between homogeneity and discreteness but not a lexical mass/count distinction.

Following up our answers to the first and second questions, it is ex-pected that there are no grammatical operations such as count-to-mass or mass-to-count shifting. It will be argued in chapter 4 that Chinese nouns may refer to ontologically different entities, they have a genuine ambiguity between object reading and stuff reading, or even a partial object reading in some occasions (see Huang and Lee 2009).

1.2. Issue 2: counting and measuring functions of classifiers

I claim that Chinese classifiers have two basic functions: a counting func-tion and a measure function, and that the semantic distinction between these two readings is reflected at the syntactic level. Based on the feature [Counting] and [Measure], a four-way classification of Chinese classifi-ers is proposed. With this, I claim that in Chinese, classifiers cannot be divided into two lexical groups, like sortal and mensural classifiers (Lyons 1977, Crofts 1994) or count and mass classifiers (Cheng and Sybesma 1998). Instead, the important distinction lies in the different uses of clas-

Issues 3

sifiers, as expressions introducing counting or expressions introducing measuring.

The Mandarin example san ping jiu three bottles of wine can either be interpreted with a counting reading or a measuring reading, as in (1a) and (1b) respectively.

(1) a. fuwusheng kai le [san ping jiu]. [Counting] waiter open PFV three CLbottle wine The waiter opened three bottles of wine.

b. fuwusheng he le [san ping jiu]. [Measure] waiter drink PFV three CLbottle wine The waiter drank three bottles of wine.

On the counting function, the classifier applies to the denotation of the bare noun, a kind, and returns a set of atomic entities, which count as one in a particular context (see Rothstein 2010). With this reading, the Numer-al-Classifier-Noun is assigned with a right-branching structure: [Num [Cl-N]].

On the measure function, the classifier first combines with the numeral to form a complex modifier, which denotes the set of entities of the head noun type whose measure value is the quantity denoted by the numera clas-sifier (see Krifka 1995, Chierchia 1998a, Landman 2004, Rothstein 2009). Therefore, with the measure reading, it is assigned with a left-branching structure: [Num-Cl [N]].

This approach is significant for several reasons. First, it suggests that both left-branching and right-branching structures are needed for Num-Cl-N, which capture two different semantic funcitions of classifiers in Chinese. Second, the distinction between counting and measuring classifiers also provide a good explanation of the licensing conditions and functions of pre-classifier adjectives and postverbal de. These two phenomena will be discussed in chapter 7 and 8 respectively.

1.3. Issue 3: definiteness in classifier languages

The third issue deals with whether it is possible to have a DP structure in classifier languages such as Chinese, in which there is no grammaticalized definite article. Contra Bokovi (2010:13) that if a language has an obli-gatory classifier system, it does not have DP, I argue that classifier lan-guages, like Wu Chinese and Cantonese, can have a refined DP structure. I

4 Introduction

also claim that the definiteness encoded by D is characterized with the pragmatic notion familiarity but not the semantic notion of uniqueness.

In southern Chinese languages, classifiers can mark definiteness in the construction Cl+N. Cl+N can be used alone, as in (2a) or be preceded by elements like adjective, relative clause, possessor, demonstrative etc., as in (2b).

(2) a. [ts kiu] si-i die. [Wu: Fuyang] CL dog die PRT

The dog died. b. [ ts kiu] si-i die.

I CL dog die PRT My dog died.

I propose that definite classifiers are quasi-definite articles that are able to instantiate a determiner head D0 via Cl-to-D raising. The elements oc-curring before the definite classifier fall into two groups in terms of their syntactic position: demonstratives are analyzed [Spec DP] and adjec-tive/relative clauses are DP modifiers.

I argue that definiteness encoded by definite classifiers is characterized with familiarity but not with uniqueness. To put it more specifically, I propose that definiteness in the Chinese languages be identified with Rob-ertss (2003) notion of weak familiarity. Definite Cl+N refer to entities that are directly involved in the situation or are presupposed to be familiar or identifiable by interlocutors, as part of the background information. The modifiers preceding Cl+N express the contextual information on famili-arity in an overt way.

2. Data and source

I will base the discussion of classifiers largely on the data of Mandarin Chinese, though I will also draw data from other Chinese languages, such as Wu and Cantonese. In chapter 9 and 10, I will explicitly discuss differ-ences between classifiers in Mandarin, Wu and Cantonese. Therefore, when using the expression Chinese, I mean the Chinese languages or the Sinitic languages, and not just Mandarin.

I now provide some general background information about the three Chinese languages that I discuss in this book: Mandarin Chinese, Wu Chi-nese and Cantonese (Yue Chinese).

Data and source 5

Mandarin Chinese was originally spoken across most of Northern and South-western areas of China. It has now become the national language of Peoples Republic of China. The variant of Mandarin studied in this book is the Putong-hua common language, i.e. Standard Mandarin.

Cantonese, a southern Chinese language, is spoken in the southern prov-inces of China, including Guangdong Province, Guangxi Province, Hong Kong Special Administration Region and Macau Special Administration Region. The variant of Cantonese I study here is Hong Kong Cantonese (mainly based on Matthews and Yips 1994 grammar).

Wu Chinese is spoken in the Yangtze Delta area including Shanghai City, Zhejiang Province and southern Jiangshu Province. The Wu data presented in this dissertation are based on the Fuyang dialect, the mother-tongue of the author. The dialect belongs to the Taihu Lake groups of the Northern Wu dialect. It is spoken in the Fuyang city, in the northwest of Zhejiang province and to the southwest of Shanghai. The dialect has about 600,000 native speakers.

The language data used in this book follows the following conventions: Mandarin: Pinyin (People's Republic of China's official Romanization

system) Cantonese: Jyutping (the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong Cantonese

Romanization Scheme) Wu (Fuyang): IPA symbols.

Note that the data I use in the book is Mandarin, unless marked otherwise. Further, tone is not marked in the examples.

The author himself is a bilingual speaker of Mandarin and the Fuyang dialect of Wu Chinese. The Mandarin examples used in this book come from various sources, e.g. retrieved from the Peking University Corpus, googled from the internet, made up by the author or otherwise cited from others. They are all carefully checked with other Mandarin speakers from different parts of China. My informants include Chen Yujie (Henan), Hung Yuchen (Taiwan), Li Luxia (Hunan), Liang Xinliang (Liaoning), Liu Hui (Beijing), Victor Pan (Hubei), Wang Luming (Zhejiang), Wang Jian (Jiangsu). The Wu examples are made up by the author and double-checked with his mother, Xu Yinfeng, and his sister, Li Ping-Er. The Can-tonese examples are taken from Matthews and Yips (1994) reference grammar of Cantonese and Cheng and Sybesmas (1999) paper. In addition, I also checked some of the Cantonese examples with my colleages, SingS-ing Ngai and Hilario de Sousa, who are native speakers of HongKong Can-tonese.

6 Introduction

3. Structure of the book

The book is composed of three parts, which deal with the three issues raised in section I in respective order.

Part I is concerned with the debate on the mass/count distinction in Mandarin.

Chapter 2 of the book defines classifiers in Chinese languages. I define classifiers with both syntactic and semantic criteria: a classifier is the me-diating element following a numeral or determiner and it expresses the semantic function of counting or measuring entities. I also discuss the ca-tegorical features of classifiers in Mandarin and English: Mandarin clas-sifiers are functional la Abney (1987), while (non-individual) classifiers in English are relational nouns in nature.

Chapter 3 discusses the question of whether there is a count/mass dis-tinction of nominal phrases in Mandarin. I review Cheng and Sybesmas (1998) claim that the count/mass nominal distinction is grammatically rea-lized in Mandarin classifiers. I examine the two syntactic tests that they argue to substantiate this claim: (i) the presence of pre-classifier adjectives and (ii) the optionality of the particle de after the classifier. I show that the facts do not support Cheng and Sybesmas distinction between mass clas-sifiers and count classifiers.

In chapter 4, I first argue that the mass/count distinction is understood as a grammatical phenomenon. It is related to the grammatical notion of countability but not to cognitive or ontological notion of individuation. It is then argued that Mandarin only has an ontological distinction between discreteness and homogeneity but has no grammatical mass/count distinc-tion. Nouns like shui water and nanhai boy merely represent two onto-logically different types of nouns, i.e. nouns referring to homogeneous and discrete entities respectively. Additionally, I argue that there is no mass-count shifting or count-mass shifting in Mandarin. Mandarin nouns have a genuine ambiguity between object reading and stuff reading, and even a partial object reading in some occasions.

Chapter 5 explores the semantics of bare nouns in Chinese. I, following Chierchia (1998b), propose that all Chinese nouns are mass nouns. Chier-chia (1998b) suggests that Chinese is an argumental language, in which (i) all the bare nouns occur freely in argument positions in their bare forms, and (ii) bare nouns make reference to kinds. I show that there is good evi-dence to accept Chierchias hypothesis. I look into the object-level inter-pretations of Chinese bare nouns by focusing on the variability of the in-terpretation of bare nouns in predicative positions (post-copula positions).

Structure of the book 7

Following Carlson (1977) and Chierchia (1998a, 1998b), I argue that the kind interpretation is the default reading for Chinese bare nouns and that object-level readings, including both indefinite and definite readings, are derived from the kind reading.

Part II deals with the counting and measuring functions of classifiers in the sequence of Numeral-Classifier-Noun.

In chapter 6, I argue that the counting and measure readings of classifi-ers are two basic functions of classifiers and that they are distinguished syntactically in Chinese. Following Rothsteins (2010) semantics for count nouns, I propose that on the counting function, the classifier applies to the denotation of bare nouns, i.e. kind terms, and returns a set of atomic enti-ties, which are counted as one in a certain context. On the measure func-tion, the classifier first combines with the numeral to form a complex mod-ifier, which denotes the set of entities of the head noun type whose measure value is the quantity denoted by the numeral. I follow basically the semantics of measuring in Krifka (1995) (see also Landman 2004, Rothstein 2009).

Based on the feature [Counting] and [Measure], I develop a four-way classification of Chinese classifiers. With this, I claim that in Chinese, classifiers cannot be divided into two lexical groups, like sortal and men-sural classifiers (as in Lyons 1977, Crofts 1994) or count and mass clas-sifiers (Cheng and Sybesma 1998). Instead, the important distinction lies in the different uses of classifiers, as expressions introducing counting or expressions introducing measuring.

Chapter 7 and 8 address the two questions left open in chapter 3 respec-tively: (i) what are the distributional patterns and the semantic function of pre-classifier adjectives? (ii) what is the licensing condition and semantics of the post-classifier de? I propose an account which crucially uses the distinction between counting and measure functions of classifiers.

In chapter 7, we argue that pre-classifier adjectives can appear before classifiers in the counting context. That is, they can only appear before [+C, -M] and [+C, +M] classifiers (the latter only on their counting interpreta-tion), but not before [-C, +M] or [-C, -M] classifiers. I propose that pre-classifier adjectives modify the constituent of Cl+N but not the classifier or the noun. As for the semantic function of pre-classifier adjectives such as da/xiao big/small, I argue that these phrases have expressive mean-ings in that they express the speakers evaluation of the atomic entity in the denotation of Cl+N to be big or small from a particular perspective cho-sen by the speaker.

8 Introduction

Chapter 8 discusses the licensing condition and the semantics of the post-classifier de. I argue that Num-Cl-de-N always has a measure reading in that Num-Cl denotes the quantity of entities represented by N and it has the syntactic structure [[[Num-Cl](-de-)]N]. Both measuring and counting classifiers can be incorporated in the measure phrase marked by de, but they express two types of measure readings: the as much as Num+Cl type and the as many as Num+Cl type. Measuring classifiers have the as much as interpretation, and counting classifiers have the as many as reading, in which the counting classifier is shifted with a measuring reading. I argue that the particle de subordinates the constituent of Num-Cl to the head noun as a modifier. It shifts Num-Cl of type to a modifier of type .

Part III discusses the realization of DP structure and the semantics of definiteness in Chinese, in particular, in southern Chinese languages like Wu and Cantonese.

Chapter 9 discusses bare classifier phrase Cl+N in Mandarin, Wu and Cantonese. In Mandarin Chinese, the Cl+N construction is only found in postverbal positions and has an indefinite reading. In Cantonese and Wu, this construction is available in both preverbal and postverbal positions. In Wu Cl+N has a definite reading when appearing preverbally, and indefi-nite when appearing postverbally (Li and Bisang 2012). In Cantonese, pre-verbal Cl+N has a definite reading and postverbal Cl+N is either defi-nite or indefinite (see Cheung 1972, Cheng and Sybesma 1999, 2004, Simposon et al 2011). The following questions will be addressed concern-ing the distribution and (in)definiteness of Cl+N: (i) What are the factors that constrain the distribution of indefinite and definite Cl+N? (ii) What is the syntax of indefinite and definite Cl+N phrases? Specifically, is inde-finite Cl+N a classifier phrase or a numeral phrase? Is definite Cl+N a definite phrase? (iii) Is the Cl+N construction derived from the counting reading or the measure reading of the classifier? (iv) What is the semantic function of the classifier in indefinite and definite Cl+N constructions?

Chapter 10 focuses on modified Cl+N, namely, a complex form of Cl+N preceded by adjectives, relative clauses, demonstratives, posses-sors etc. In section 2, I claim that modified Cl+N are unambiguously definite. I propose a unified DP structure for bare and modified Cl+N, in which the classifier heads DP. The preceding elements fall into two groups in terms of their syntactic positions: demonstratives are specifiers of DP, and adjectives/relative clauses and possessors are DP modifiers. In section 3, a compositional semantics is proposed la Bach and Cooper (1978), namely, DPs can optionally take an extra property argument, which is satu-

Structure of the book 9

rated by the denotation of a high-adjoined modifier and intersected with the property contributed by the content of the noun phrase.

Part I: The debate on a count/mass distinction in Chinese

Chapter 2 Defining classifiers

1. Chinese classifiers: an illustration

1.1. Identifying classifiers syntactically

This chapter defines classifiers. In a broad sense, classifier is used as a general cover term for noun classification devices, which include noun class markers, numeral classifiers, possessive classifiers, locative classifi-ers etc., as discussed in Allan (1977), Craig (1992) and Aikhenvald (2000). However, in this study, the term classifier is used to refer to numeral clas-sifiers in a narrow sense. Numeral classifiers are an essential part of the grammar of East and Southeast Asian languages, such as Chinese languag-es, Korean, Japanese, Lao, Hmong, Vietnamese etc. According to Green-berg (1974) and Bisang (1999), the existence of numeral classifiers is an areal feature of East and Southeast Asian languages.

To illustrate, in languages like English, nouns with high countability like woman, table, cat etc. can be directly combined with a numeral, such as two women, three tables, one cat respectively. However, there are also languages whose nouns in construction with numerals may occur with an additional grammatical element even when such nouns are of high counta-bility (Gil 2005). For instance, in Mandarin Chinese, numerals cannot modify nouns directly and it is obligatory to have a mediating element in-between, such as ge in (1b) and ke in (2b). They are the so-called numeral classifiers.

(1) a.* liang xuesheng [Mandarin] two student b. liang ge xuesheng

two CL student two students

(2) a.*san shu

14 Defining classifiers

three tree b. san ke shu three CL tree

three tree

In Chinese, the term classifier is called ling-c quantity word or dnwi-c unit word (L 1942). This suggests that its function is to help to express quantity or to give a unit for entities. The morpheme ge is a gen-eral classifier for individuals. In the example of liang ge xuesheng in (1b), the numeral liang two requires the presence of ge, which provides a counting unit for the animate noun xuesheng student. It means two stu-dents. In (2b), ke is a specific classifier for plants. It expresses the unit of tree or flower. The numeral three has to combine with ke to modify the noun shu tree. The phrase means three individual trees.

As the term itself suggests, a numeral classifier typically goes with numerals. In languages like Mandarin, it is an obligatory syntactic re-quirement that numerals take a classifier when modifying nouns. The ex-amples in (1) and (2) characterize one of the most prototypical syntactic contexts where numeral classifiers may occur, i.e. Numeral + Classifier + Noun (Num-Cl-N for short).

In other classifier languages, nouns are not preceded but followed by Num+Cl. For instance, Thai has the word order N+Num+Cl, in which the classifier is obligatory too. Look at (3) for an illustration.

(3) a.*thrian sam [Thai] durian three b. thrian sam luuk

durian three CL three durians (Jenks 2011: 77)

Nonetheless, numeral classifiers are not merely restricted to the co-occurrence with numeral. They also occur with determiners in these clas-sifier languages. Det+Cl+N (or N+Det+Cl) is the second possible syn-tactic context for numeral classifiers. I use the example from Mandarin and Lao to illustrate.

In Mandarin, it is obligatory for some determiners to take a classifier when modifying nouns, such as the universal quantifier mei every. Look at (4) as an illustration.

(4) a.*mei shu [Mandarin]

Chinese classifiers: an illustration 15

every book b. mei ben shu every CL book

every book

According to Enfield (2007: 122), a number of quantifiers in Lao also require numeral classifiers, appearing in the same constructional pattern as numeral classifier expressions:

(5) a. kuu3 s4 (paa3) baang3 too3. [Laos] I buy fish some CL

I bought some (of the fish). b. kuu3 s4 (paa3) thuk1 too3.

I buy fish every CL I bought every one (of the fish).

Examples from (1) to (5) characterize two prototypical syntactic envi-ronments for numeral classifiers:

(i) Numeral-Classifier-Noun (or Noun-Numeral-Classifier) (ii) Determiner-Classifier-Noun (or Noun-Determiner-Classifier).

Therefore, from the syntactic perspective, the term numeral classifier can be understood as the mediating element occurring contiguous to num-eral or determiner when modifying nouns. Semantically, it has the function of counting or measuring entities, namely, providing counting or measuring units.

There are two issues arising immediately. First, the examples I showed so far are all concerned with classifiers modifying nouns with high coun-tability in Gils term (2005). They are often called sortal or individual classifiers, such as ben volume (for book) in Mandarin, lu uk in Thai and too3 in Lao. However, there are also elements modifying nouns with low countability, such as cup in one cup of coffee, pound in two pounds of sugar, plume in three plumes of smoke. They are called mensural or non-individual classifiers. Should I consider them to be classifiers too?

My answer to this question is positive. I take the position that as long as a morpheme is able to satisfy the syntactic and semantic requirements for classifiers as stated above, they can be categorized as classifiers, including both individual classifiers and non-individual classifiers.

Second, non-individual classifiers are found in almost every language (universally available Croft 1994, Bisang 1999), whereas individual


classifiers are exclusively found in languages like Mandarin, Thai, Lao, Vietnamese. Languages in the world can be classified into typologically different types, depending on whether a language has sortal classifiers or not. The term classifier language is used here to refer to languages with sortal classifiers. Therefore, Chinese languages like Mandarin are repre-sentative classifier languages, while Indo-European languages like English are non-classifier languages.

According to WALS (the World Atlas of Language Structures Online 2005), among the 400 languages investigated, 260 languages have no sortal classifier, 62 languages allow an optional use of sortal classifiers, and 78 languages uses sortal classifiers in an obligatory manner. Therefore, in addition to classifier and non-classifier languages, there are also optional classifier languages.

In optional classifier languages, there are individual classifiers, but their occurence in Numeral-Classifier-Noun is optional. One example of such a language is Minangkabau, in which classifiers such as ikue in (6) are sometimes present but in other cases absent.

(6) duo (ikue) anjiang [Minangkabau] two CL dog two dogs (Gil 2005)

In brief, here, I investigate numeral classifiers in Chinese, that is, the grammatical morpheme occurring between numeral/determiner and noun.

1.2. Chinese classifiers: a heuristic classification

According to the syntactic criterion that a classifier refers to the element occurring between numeral/determiner and noun in Chinese, elements from different sources may fall into this category. In what follows, I will show how different lexical types of classifiers can be distinguished in a heuristic way la Chao (1968).

Chao (1968) makes a classification of six lexically different types of classifiers (measure in his terms)1: individual classifiers, group classifiers,

1 In earlier descriptive works, the element between numeral/determiner and noun is

called classifier by some and measure by others. These two terms are not clearly distinguished and one is often subsumed under another. For example, Chao (1968: 584) treats all Chinese classifiers as measures in the sense that a measure is a


partition classifiers, container classifiers, temporary classifiers and stan-dard measures.2 The relevant Mandarin examples are given from (7) to (12):

Individual classifiers: modify nouns according to the entitys shape, or other properties.

(7) a. liang ke shu two CL tree

two trees b. yi tiao he

one CL river a river

Individual classifiers individualize a given count noun by designating its semantic boundaries (Bisang 1999: 118-119) or by designating its natural unit (Croft 1994: 163). The classifier ke in (7a) is a specific indi-vidual classifier for plants, such as shu tree and cao grass. The classifier tiao in (7b) modifies nouns denoting long-shaped entities, including he river, bahen scar, shengzi rope etc. The lexical meaning expressed by individual classifiers usually has to be topologically compatible with the entities denoted by noun, e.g. their shape, size etc.

Group classifiers: used for a group or collection of individuals. Ac-cording to Lehere (1986: 117), it expresses numerosity.

(8) a. san qun xuesheng three CLgroup student

three groups of students b. yi kun daocao one CLbundle straw a bundle of straws

The classifier qun group in (8a) modifies [+animate] nouns, such as ren people, xuesheng students or zhu pig etc. It represents an aggre-

bound morpheme which forms a Determinative-Measure compound, where the Determinative includes demonstratives, numerals, or quantifiers. In contrast, Li and Thompson (1981: 106) subsume measures under classifiers and say that any meas-ure word can be a classifier. In the current research, I use the term classifier. 2 Chao (1968) listed out nine types of classifiers: seven types of nominal classifiers

and two subtypes of verbal classifiers. I ignore the seventh class of nominal clas-sifiers, i.e. quasi-measure expressions, because they behave more like nouns than like classifiers.


gate or a gathering of animated entities. The group classifier kun in (8b) is similar to the meaning of bundle in English, referring to the collection of entities tied together with strings. Classifiers in this group include dui pile in yi dui pingguo a pile of apples, cuan string in yi cuan lajiao a string of chili peppers, ba handful in yi ba douzi a handful of beans.

Partition classifiers: represent portions of things. What is speical about partition classifiers is that they represent some particular part of en-tity taken from a large part or a whole individual entity. In other words, a part-whole relation is always implied.

(9) a. yi jie shengzi one CLsection rope

a section of rope b. yi pian dangao

one CLpiece cake a piece of cake

The noun shengzi rope can be modified by the individual classifier tiao, as in yi tiao shengzi a rope, which represent a length of rope. Con-trastively, in (9a), yi jie shengzi simply means a small section of rope, which is cut off from a long one. The partitive classifier phrase in (9a) presupposes the existence of a long rope. The example (9b) has the similar presupposition that a piece of cake is partitioned out of a large piece.

Container classifiers: container nouns used as measures.

(10) a. yi ping jiu one CLbottle wine

a bottle of wine b. san che chengke

three CLbus passenger three busloads of passengers

There are two points worth noting about container classifiers. First, the container referred to by the container classifier does not have to exist phys-ically in every case. Yi ping shui in (10a) can either refer to the scenario that there is a physical bottle which contains wine or that there is as much wine as one bottle, say, 750ml. In the latter case, the container is used as a standard measure. Second, container nouns are an open class, but container classifiers are not. Not every container noun can be used as container clas-


sifiers. There are some general constraints when deriving container nouns into container classifiers. This point will be elaborated in section 3.

Temporary classifiers: use the outside extent of objects to measure quantity.

(11) a. yi shen xue one CLbody snow

a bodyful of snow b. yi bizi hui one CLnose dust

Lit:a noseful of dust An idiom meaning: being refused

In Lehrer (1986), temporary classifiers are treated as a subtype of con-tainer classifiers. The concept container must be construed very gener-ally to include not only objects for putting other objects and substances in, but also on and even under (Lehrer 1986: 120). Examples include a ceil-ing of posters, a wall of pictures, and a shelf of books in English. However, I think that there are some crucial semantic differences between container classifiers and temporary classifiers. Container classifiers can be easily used as standard measures (by convention), while generally speaking, temporary classifiers can only be inexact measures.

Standard measures: they are measures proper. The set of standard measures is small and closed in Chinese. It is also true in other languages (see Allan 1977). Standard measures range from measure units for weight, length, volume and so on.

(12) a. wu mi bu five CLmeter cloth

five meters of cloth b. liang gongjin pingguo

two CLkilo apple two kilos of apples

These are the six types of classifiers discussed in Chao (1968). One par-ticular type of classifier that is not discussed by Chao (1968) is kind clas-sifier. They are zhong kind/species and lei type in Chinese. They are used in the same syntactic contexts as the classifiers shown above, namely, they can be used in Num/Determiner+Cl+N, as shown in (13).

(13) a. zhe zhong dongwu


this CLkind animal this kind of animal

b. liang lei butong-de ren two CLtype different people two different types of people

In this research, I will also take into account kind classifiers. The classification of these six subtypes of classifiers made by Chao

(1968) is heuristic. It is based on the different origins and lexical meanings of classifiers. From examples (7) to (13), it appears that Chinese classifiers do not constitute a semantically homogeneous class, although they can be identified consistently according to the syntactic criterion, i.e. the syntactic contexts in which they are allowed. Different subtypes of classifiers em-phasize different ways of quantifying entities, such as the natural unit of entities, the quantity of aggregated entities, or standard measurement of entities.

In the rest of the chapter, I will examine whether the different subtypes of classifiers in Chinese constitute a uniform category in terms of their syntactic properties. Specifically, I am interested in finding out whether the classifiers have the same categorical feature, namely, having the same de-gree of lexical/functional make-up. I argue that while Chinese classifiers come from different sources, they constitute an independent category, to be distinguished from nouns or numbers. They are functional and belong to a closed class.

The remainder of the chapter is structured as follows. From section 2 through 5, I will spell out the argument that Chinese classifiers constitute a functional category la Abeny (1987). Section 6 offers a contrastive look at classifiers in English. The chapter is concluded in section 7.

Before proceeding to justify our arguments, I summarize Abenys (1987: 64-65) five criteria for functional elements (not in the original order):

a. Functional elements constitute closed classes. b. Functional elements lack descriptive content. Their semantic

contribution is second-order, regulating or contributing to the inter-pretation of their complement. They mark grammatical or relational features, rather than picking out a class of objects.

c. Functional elements permit only one complement, which is in gener-al not an argument. The arguments are CP, PP and DP. Functional elements select IP, VP, NP.

d. Functional elements are usually inseparable from their complement.

Classifiers as a closed class 21

e. Functional elements are generally phonologically or morphologically dependent. They are generally stressless, often affixes or clitics, and sometimes even phonologically null.

2. Classifiers as a closed class

The first issue I am interested in is whether classifiers belong to an open or a closed word class. I will show that Mandarin classifiers belong to a closed class.

Greenberg (1972), Allan (1977), Denny (1976, 1979), and others, all point out that classifier languages have a small, closed, paradigmatic con-trasting set of morphemes (cf. Lehrer 1986: 110). The number of classifier varies in each classifier language. In Mandarin Chinese, one classifier dictionary lists 199 classifiers, 76 of them sortal (38%), while a teaching grammar of the 143 most commonly used classifiers lists 66 sortal (46%) (cf. Erbaugh 2002:39).

I counted the numbers of each type of classifiers listed in Chao (1968), as shown in the following Table 1. According to this table, there are around 50 individual classifiers in Mandarin. Roughly speaking, the num-ber of the most frequently used individual classifiers in Mandarin ranges from fifty to seventy, depending on factors like register and regional dif-ferences etc.

Table 1. Numbers of classifiers in each subtype

Table 1 does not represent an exhaustive list of the number of classifi-ers, since what Chao lists only represents the most frequently used classifi-ers in each type. Among the six types of classifiers in Chinese discussed in Chao (1968), members of individual classifiers, group classifiers, partition classifiers and standard measures are relatively stable. It is rare to see new

Classifiers Numbers Examples A Individual Cls 51 ge (the general classifier), ben volume,

tou head (classifier for animials) B Group Cls 46 qun group, lie series, kun bundle... C Partition Cls 39 pian piece, jie section, si slice D Container Cls 36 he box, hu kettle, wan bowl E Temporary Cls 14 shen body, lian face, di floor F Standard measures 46 mi meter, shen liter


members join in, though this possibility cannot be ruled out absolutely. However, those of container and temporary classifiers seem to be open to a great extent. Intuitively, the number of container and temporary classifiers should be much larger than what is listed in Table 1. This is because nouns referring to containers can be easily used as container classifiers, such as yi dai laji a bag of rubbish, and nouns referring to objects whose surface or outer area is able to measure quantities of entities can be used as temporary classifiers in many cases, such as yi lian hanshui a faceful of sweat. These two types of nouns belong to an open class, so it is very easy for many to make the analogy that these two types of classifiers, i.e. container and temporary classifiers, are also open. However, I do not think that this kind of analogy withstands scrutiny. I use container classifiers to illustrate some of the problems with this kind of analogy.

In many cases, nouns expressing typical containers cannot be used as container classifiers. For example, jiaoshi classroom can be seen as a perfect container for xuesheng student in a metaphorical sense, as in the example many students sat in the classroom. However, the expres-sion of #yi jiaoshi xuesheng #a classroom of students is not felicitous in Mandarin. At least, it is not as natural as yi ban xuesheng a class of stu-dents or yi wu xuesheng a room of students. A similar example is about the use of qianbao wallet. We usually put money in a wallet, so it is rea-sonable to consider wallet to be a prototypical container for money. How-ever, it is not common to use qianbao as a container classifier for money and the expression #yi qianbao qian #a wallet of money is unacceptable, though the meaning of the expression is understandable to native speakers. Many would use yi bao qian a bag of money instead. This shows that container nouns can express a relation of containment, but they cannot be used as container classifiers freely. There are some underlying constraints for such a category shift.

It is a conventionalized practice to choose a certain classifier to modify a certain group of nouns. There are some selectional constraints between the classifier and the noun, which may be semantic or conventional. One of the constraints for the container noun-to-container classifier-shifting is conventionalization. For example, to talk about cherries, it is common to say a basket of cherries or a plate of cherries but it is not as common to say a mug of cherries. This expression is understandable to the addressees, but mug is not a conventional container to cherries or it is not a conven-tional practice to use mug to carry cherries. Certainly, in this special con-text, mug can be (non-conventionally) analyzed as a special container clas-

Classifiers without descriptive content 23

sifier for cherries, but this use will not be conventionalized or accepted in a general way in the linguistic community.

To sum up, there are conventional and non-conventional uses of clas-sifiers. The members of conventional classifiers are stable to a great extent, while the innovative use of classifiers may introduce new classifiers into the system, but innovative classifiers do not change the membership of classifiers in nature. Historically speaking, some of the core members of conventional classifiers developed from innovative classifiers, but this kind of development or conventionalization takes a fairly long process.

I conclude that Mandarin classifiers belong to a closed class. Each sub-type of classifier has stable and conventionalized members.

3. Classifiers without descriptive content

This section teases out the relation between lexical meaning and descrip-tive content of classifiers. The important questions to be pursued are: (i) are classifiers or some of the classifiers (e.g. mensural classifiers) nominal in nature? (ii) does the fact that a classifier expresses some lexical meaning mean that they belong to a lexical category? Our answers to these two questions are in the negative.

3.1. Classifiers are not nominal

Many hold the opinion that Mandarin classifiers are lexical, or more pre-cisely, being nominal. For example, Zhu ([1982] 1990: 50) considers clas-sifiers to be content words, on a par with nouns. A similar idea dates back to Wang (1943), who defines classifiers as a special type of noun. They are called unit noun (danwei mingci in Chinese). A recent account in support of this view is found in Wu and Bodomo (2009: 488), who claim that Mandarin classifiers are contentful morphemes which are used to indi-cate the semantic classes of nouns; hence, they often carry information beyond that carried by their associated noun (cf. Allan 1977).

Another viewpoint is that different types of classifiers have different lexical/functional make-ups. According to Cheng and Sybesma (1998: 14-17), there are count and mass classifiers in Chinese, which have differ-ent categorical features. Assuming that all classifiers have nominal orgins, they claim that count classifiers are fully grammaticalized classifiers and


cannot occur as independent nouns, while massifiers are really nouns , as such are an open class.

One group of classifiers consists of elements which are completely gram-maticalized as classifiers. They form a closed class, and they cannot occur as independent nouns.

The other group of classifiers do not constitute a closed class in the sense that any noun which can be seen to create a unit for measuring mass nouns can be used (notably all sorts of container words or words that can be inter-preted as containers; e.g. wan bowl, bei cup). So the latter group consists of elements which also occur as independent nouns.

I first argue against the view that Mandarin classifiers have a nominal origin. Classifiers in Mandarin grammaticalize from different categories, which can be nouns, verbs or adjectives. A majority of classifiers have a nominal origin, but some of them are evolved from verbs and adjectives. See the illustration in (14) and (15).

The classifiers in (14) are derived from verbs historically. For example, on its verb use, gua in (14a) originally means hang. It has an extended use as classifier, meaning string. The morpheme peng in (14b) has the lexical meaning scoop with hand; in classifier use, it means handful. In (14c), the morpheme cuo, as a verb, means take up with fingers literally. Used as a classifier, it means pinch.

(14) a. yi gua bianpao [classifiers derived from verbs] one CLstring firecrackers a string of firecrackers b. yi peng xiangtu one CLhandful soil:from:homeland a handful of soil from homeland c. yi cuo yan one CLpinch salt a pinch of salt

In contrast, those in (15) are adjectives: wan means curved and fang means square. When they are used as classifiers, they refer to entities with the shape of being crescent or square respectively.


(15) a. yi wan mingyue [classifiers derived from adjectives] one CLcurved moon a cresent of moon

b. yi fang yantai one CLsquare ink stone a piece of ink stone

In the two groups of examples in (14) and (15), the element between numeral and noun cannot be treated as verbs or adjectives any more. They are reanalyzed as classifiers, which provide units to measure or count enti-ties referred to by noun. Specifically, those in (14) are non-individual clas-sifiers and those in (15) are individual classifiers. If the examples in (14) and (15) are taken into account, then, surely, it is incorrect to say that all classifiers are originally nouns.

Second, I show that it is not correct either to treat a subgroup of clas-sifiers as nouns, such as mass classifier or non-individual classifiers. Among the different types of non-individual classifiers, container classifi-ers have the highest degree of nominal properties and they have noun uses, but group classifiers and most partition classifiers have a rather low degree of nominal properties and they cannot be used as nouns.

The first column of (16) illustrates the classifier use of the morphemes. In the second column, the corresponding morphemes are modified by the general classifier ge, as in the construction Num-ge-N. This suggests that container classifiers have a high degree of nominal properties and they have noun counterparts.

(16) container Cl N a. yi ping shui a. yi *(ge) ping

one CLbottle water one CL bottle one bottle of water one bottle b. yi xiang pingguo b. yi *(ge) xiang one CLbox apple one CL box one box of apples one box c. yi dai binggan c. yi *(ge) dai one CLbag biscuit one CL bag one bag of biscuits one bag

In contrast, group classifiers show a low degree of nominal properties in that they cannot function as nouns independently. As shown in the second column of (17), they cannot be modified by the general classifier ge and


they are not allowed in Num-ge-N. However, they can be a part of a noun compound, which can be modified by the general classifier ge, as in the third column.

(17) group Cl N N-compound a. yi kun daocao a.*yi ge kun a.yi ge cao-kun one CLbundle straw one CL bundle one CL straw-bundle a bundle of straws a bundle a straw-bundle b. yi huo liumang b.*yi ge huo b. yi ge tuan-huo one CLgroup hooligan one CL group one CL gang-group a group of hooligans a group a gang c. yi dui huo c.*yi ge dui c. yi ge huo-dui one CLpile fire one CL pile one CL fire-pile a pile of fire a pile a bonfire

Most partition classifiers have an even lower degree of nominal proper-ties. They can neither be used as nouns nor can they form noun compounds, though originally they are nouns. Partition classifiers such as luo pile or duan section in (18) cannot be formed into noun compounds.

(18) partition Cl N a. yi luo wenjian a.* yi ge luo one CLpile document one CL pile one pile of documents one pile b. yi duan ganzhe b.* yi ge duan one CLsection sugarcane one CL section one section of sugarcane one section c. yi zhang zhi c* yi ge zhang one CLpiece paper one CL piece one piece of paper one piece

Therefore, it is not entirely true to say that non-individual classifiers are nouns. They exhibit different degrees of nominal properties: some have noun counterparts, some can only be part of noun compounds and others can simply be classifiers.

Importantly, individual classifiers do not form a unified class either in terms of their nominal properties. There are indeed a large number of indi-vidual classifiers that can be used as independent nouns. For example, in (19), the count classifiers are as lexical as container classifiers are. As


shown in the second column in (19), they, as nouns, must themselves be preceded by classifiers in order to be modified by numerals.

(19) count CL N a. yi tou niu a.* yi ge tou

one CLhead bull one CL head a bull one head

b. wu shan men b.* wu ba shan five CLfan door five CL fan five doors five fans c. san ben shu c.* san ge ben three CLvolume book three CL exercise-book

three books three exercise books

In contrast, some individual classifiers have a low degree of nominal prop-erties. They cannot be used as nouns independently, but they can be used in noun compounds, as in (20).

(20) count CL N N-compound a. yi ba yizi a.* yi ge ba a. yi ge che-ba

one CL chair one CL grip one CL bicycle-grip a chair Intended: a grip a bicycle-grip

b. yi duo hua b.* yi ge duo b. yi duo hua-duo one CL flower one CL bud one CL flower-bud a flower Intended: a bud a bud c. yi zhi hua c.*yi ge zhi c. yi gen shu-zhi one CL flower one CL twig one CL tree-twig a branch of flower Intended: a twig a twig

There are also individual classifiers that have an even lower degree of nominal properties in that they can only be used as classifiers, as given in (21)3.

3 According to Hanyu Dazidian [Comprehensive Chinese Dictionary], the classifi-

ers in (21) were all nouns in origin. For example, the general classifier ge means bamboo branch, zhi means bird and mei trunk in classical Chinese. However, in modern Chinese, the lexical meanings of this group of classifiers are bleached to such a degree that they cannot be used independently anymore.


(21) count CL N a. yi ge ren a.* yi ge ge

one CL man one CL CL a man

b. yi zhi dou b. *yi ge zhi one CL dog one CL CL a dog c. yi mei tongqian c.* yi ge mei one CL copper coin one CL CL a copper coin

Until now, I have answered the first question raised at the beginning of this section. I make two claims concerning the question whether classifiers are nominal. First, Mandarin classifiers are derived from different catego-ries, such as nouns, verbs and adjectives, but most of them have a nominal origin. Second, among those classifiers with a nominal origin, they exhibit different degrees of nominal features. This holds true for both individual and non-individual classifiers. Among the individual classifiers, there are classifiers with a high degree of nominal properties, and also classifiers with a low degree of nominal properties, and the same is true for non-individual classifiers. Therefore, it is inappropriate to claim that all Manda-rin classifiers are nominal or that non-individual classifiers are nominal.

3.2. Classifiers have no descriptive content

As for the second question, I argue that classifiers have lexical content, but they are not content words. It is important to distinguish between lexical meaning and descriptive content of classifiers.

Wu and Bodomo (2009) argue that Chinese classifiers are contentful morphemes. They add extra semantic information about the entities ex-pressed by the noun. Specifically, they are used to indicate the semantic classes of nouns; hence, they often carry information beyond that carried by their associated noun.

According to them, due to their content, different classifiers can be used with the same noun to create distinct cognitive effects. The examples in (22) are taken from them, where the noun shu book can be modified by different classifiers, such as ben volume, bao bag, luo pile and xiang box.


(22) a. yi ben shu one CLvolume book one book b. yi bao shu one CLbag book one bag of books c. yi luo shu one CLpile book one pile of books d. yi xiang shu one CLbox book

one box of books

That some element expresses lexical meaning does not imply that it is a lexical item or a content word. Lets take auxiliary verbs for example. Both in English and Chinese, auxiliary verbs give further semantic or syntactic information about a main verb, such as modality, attitude or temporal ref-erences. However, it is generally agreed that they are functional words in both languages. Another similar case regards prepositions. Prepositions are functional words but express semantic content, such as spatial (or temporal) meaning. Therefore, the fact that classifiers are able to add extra informa-tion about the denotation of nouns does not necessarily lead to the conclu-sion that they are content words.

As said earlier, a single lexical item may be used as a noun or as a clas-sifier, such as the dual use of bao bag. However, the meaning expressed by its classifier use is distinctive from what is expressed by its noun use. Each use has a different meaning. When the lexical item bao bag is used as a noun, it refers to a certain bag, say, a school bag or a plastic bag. However, when it is used as a classifier, as in (22b), it is used in a relation-al way as a container to hold books. In this case, the main function of bao bag is to express a containment relation. It is even possible that there is no physical bag in the actual scene. The phrase yi bao shu may simply mean a package of books, which are wrapped up with craft paper. There-fore, it seems that a single lexical item can be used in two different syntac-tic contexts, in which they express different semantic meanings. It is possi-ble that there are two different lexical entries for a single morpheme in this case: a noun entry and a classifier entry (a sortal noun use and a rela-tional noun in Lbner 1985 and Partee and Borschev 2012).


This provides further evidence in support of the view that classifiers should be categorically distinguished from the word class, from which they are derived, which are content words and can be nouns, verbs or adjectives.

What is meant by saying that the classifiers are functional is that they do not have descriptive content (Abeny 1987: 65), and they express the grammatical function of counting or measuring entities, as will be defined later in chapter 6.

4. Classifiers are complement-taking

I now look at Abenys (1987) criterion (c) and (d). Criterion (c) states that functional elements permit only one complement, which is in general not an argument. Criterion (d) says that functional elements are usually inse-parable from their complement.

It is impossible to use classifiers alone in Mandarin Chinese. They must always be adjacent to some other element, either following determin-ers/numerals or preceding nouns. The examples from (23) to (28) illustrate the possible syntactic contexts for classifiers in Mandarin.4

4 Tang (1990) examines the possible contexts of classifiers in Mandarin as well.

According to her, the demonstrative or the numeral must co-occur with the clas-sifier. According to Tang, the examples in (i) are ungrammatical. (i) a.*na shu (Tang 1990:398) b.*ben shu (Tang 1990: 400)

that book CL book However, Tangs observation is not complete. Both Dem+N and Cl+N are

possible in Mandarin, but they are constrained by some restrictions. Generally speaking, Dem+N is usually found in subject positions and not in object position in Mandarin, as exemplified in (ii). (ii) a. zhe shu shi wo- de. b. ???wo mai le zhe shu. this book be mine I buy PFV this book This book is mine. I bought this book.

As for Cl+N, Zhu (1982: 52) points out that in Mandarin, Cl+N can appear in object positions and not in subject positions. Cheng and Sybesma (1999) argue that indefinite Cl+N are restricted in lexically governed positions, such as post-verbal positions. Nevertheless, Lin (1997) said that Cl+N can be used after verb as object, but it cannot appear as the complement of a preposition, as in (iii). (iii) Ta gen *(yi) jia chubanshe you heyue. he with one CL publisher have contract Intended: He has a contract with a publisher.

Classifiers are complement-taking 31

Firstly, classifiers are complement-taking, and noun phrases are the on-ly possible constituent that can be taken as complement to classifiers.

(23) [Cl+N] wo gei ni pao le [bei cha]. 1SG give you make PFV CL tea I made you a cup of tea.

Cl+N can only have a singular reading, so bei cha in (23) only means a cup of tea, but not cups of tea. Some believe that in the case of (23), there is a covert numeral yi one before Cl+N. I will discuss this issue in chapter 9.

A second context is that the constituent of Cl+N can be modified by numerals, as the sequence of Num+Cl+N in (24).

(24) [Num+ Cl+N] ta qing le [liang ge xuesheng]. he invite PFV two CL student He invited two students.

Thirdly, Cl+N can be directly modified by determiners and Dem+ Cl+N has a singular interpretation, as in (25). In order to have plural read-ings, numerals larger than one can be inserted between Dem and Cl, as in the sequence Dem+Num+Cl+N, as in (26).

(25) [Det+Cl+N] wo yao [na ben shu]. I want that CL book I want that book.

(26) [Det+Num+Cl+N] [na san ben shu] shi wo-de. that three CL book be mine Those three books were bought by me.

Fourthly, when the classifier is modified by numerals and/or determin-ers, the NP can be elided. Num-Cl and Dem-(Num)-Cl are both legiti-mate constructions. The relevant examples are given below, where the NP is either elided, which can be recovred from the context, as in (27) or topi-calized, as in (28).


(27) [Det+Cl] wo yao [na ben shu]. I want that CL book I want that volume (of book).

(28) [Num+CL] pingguo, wo zhi chi le [wu ge]. apple I only eat PFV five CL Apples, I only ate five.

Nevertheless, as I mentioned earlier, a classifier cannot be used by itself. For example, the example in (29) is ungrammatical, since there is no num-eral preceding it or noun following it.5

(29) *[Cl] * cha, wo pao le bei. tea I make PFV CLcup Intended: As for tea, I made a cup.

It is clear from examples (23) to (29) that classifiers are complement-taking and they take an NP as complement.

5. Classifiers as stressless

Classifiers are usually stressless in Mandarin. As Tao (2006) said that in Beijing Mandarin, there is often one accent on the phrase; it falls on the numeral while leaving the classifier unstressed. Chen (2000:321) also

5 Classifiers can be reduplicated and express distributive meaning. The reduplicated

classifiers behave more like floating quantifiers and they usually requires a plural nominal phrase as antecedent, as in (i). However, reduplicated classifeirs cannot be used in argument positions alone, such as subject or object, as in (ii). This distinguishes reduplicated classifiers from other classifier phrases, which are argumental, such as Num-Cl-N or Dem-Num-Cl-N. (i) ta de xuesheng ge-ge dou hen congming.

He Mod student Cl-CL all very clever His students all are clever. (ii) # ge-ge dou hen congming. CL-CL all very clever Intended: Each is clever.

Classifiers in English: a contrastive look 33

points out that classifiers in Beijing Mandarin and many other Chinese dialects usually bear a neutral tone (toneless). The example Chen (ibid) gives is that in the phrase liang ge ren two Cl person, the classifier ge is stressless, as indicated by the underline. This generalization applies to standard Mandarin as well (see Chao 1968).

The exception is that classifiers can be contrastively focused by stress placement. As in (30), the classifier wan bowl and guo pot are stressed, as indicated by letters in bold. It expresses the contrastive meaning that two individuals drank two different quantities of soup, say a large quantity, as expressed by wan, versus a small quantity, as expressed by guo.

(30) wo he le yi wan tang, ta he le yi guo. I drink PFV one CLbowl soup he drink PFV one CLpot I drank a bowl of soup, and he drank a pot.

Intermediate summary: To summarize section 2 to 5, I showed that Mandarin classifiers pass Abenys (1987) tests: (i) belonging to a closed class, (ii) lacking descrip-tive content, (iii) being syntactically dependent, (iv) being phonologically weak. Accordingly, classifiers in Mandarin are considered to be functional and not lexical (also see Muromatsu 1998 for a similar view on classifiers in Japanese). It is a standard assumption that Chinese classifiers head an independent functional projection of classifier phrase (ClP for short) (Tang 1990 a, b; A. Li 1999; Cheng and Sybesma 1999, among others). Applying Abenys (1987) DP hypothesis to Chinese, Tang (1990a, b) argues that in Chinese, there is an extra projection between the determiner phrase, i.e. DP and the noun phrase, i.e. NP and this projection is realized by a classifier phrase, i.e. ClP. Tang (1990) thus proposes a DP structure like [DP D [NumP Num [ClP CL [NP N]]]] for nominal phrases in Mandarin. I will discuss in chapter 6 what are the possible syntactic structures for the se-quence of Num-Cl-N.

6. Classifiers in English: a contrastive look

This section makes a comparison of classifiers between Mandarin Chinese and English by focusing on their categorical differences. I said earlier that Mandarin is a classifier language, whereas English is a non-classifier lan-


guage. When talking about classifiers in English, I refer to non-individual classifiers but not the individual classifiers. The construction which allows these classifiers are usually called pseudo-partitives (Selkirk 1977). I propose that classifiers in non-classifier languages are borrowed from nouns and do not have an independent categorical status as classifiers (see Jackendoff 1977 for English, Riemsdijk 1998 and Corver 1998 for Dutch, Rothstein 2009 for the analysis of classifiers in English and Modern He-brew), and that classifiers in Chinese constitute an independent category, and they are distinguished from nouns.

According to Allan (1977), the following five types of classifiers are distinguished in English (cf. Lehrer 1986: 111).6 Note that measure clas-sifiers in Allans terminology actually corresponds to three different types of classifiers in Chaos taxonomy, i.e. standard measures, container clas-sifiers and temporary classifiers.

(31) Unit counters a. a piece of equipment b. a head of cabbage c. an ear of corn

(32) Collective classifiers a. two clumps of grass b. a herd of animals.

(33) Varietal classifiers a. two species of wheat b. all kinds of flowers

(34) Measure classifiers a. two pounds of cabbage b. one liter of wine c. a box of candy d. a bowl of sugar.

6 Allan (1977) considers fractional classifiers, such as three quarters of the cake

and number set of classifiers, such as many hundreds of people and dozens of bird, to be classifiers as well. In many languages, these expressions are expressed by quantifiers. For example, Lehrer (1986: 112) did not consider them as classifiers and said that the syntax and semantics for quantifiers will handle most of them.

Classifiers in English: a contrastive look 35

(35) Arrangement classifiers a. two rows of beans b. three stacks of books.

There are striking differences between English and Chinese classifiers with respect to their grammatical properties and categorical features.

To start with, it is important to make a distinction between unit counters in English and individual classifiers in Chinese. At first glance, unit coun-ters in (31) seem to be very much like individual classifiers in Chinese, on the ground that they both provide a counting unit for discrete entities, such as a head of cabbage in (31b) and an ear of corn in (31c). However, unlike Chinese individual classifiers, these unit counters in English are not re-quired between numeral and noun in an obligatory manner. This is one of the crucial differences between them. Moreover, most of these expressions were codified in the fifteenth century (Lipton 1968), but they are not productively used in modern English. English employs Numeral + Noun as a dominant syntactic structure to quantify count nouns. I thus generalize that in English, unit counters do not constitute an independent class, nor are they used productively.

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