Chinese classifier
Classifiers are used when a noun is qualified by a numeral known as a noun phrase. When a phrase is translated into Chinese, it is normally necessary to insert an appropriate classifier between the numeral and the noun. The total number of classifiers in Chinese may be put at anywhere from a few dozen to several hundred, depending on how they are counted. The term classifier is also used to refer to a particle without any particular meaning of its own.
About Chinese classifier in brief
Classifiers are used when a noun is qualified by a numeral known as a noun phrase. When a phrase is translated into Chinese, it is normally necessary to insert an appropriate classifier between the numeral and the noun. The total number of classifiers in Chinese may be put at anywhere from a few dozen to several hundred, depending on how they are counted. Most nouns have one or more particular classifiers associated with them, often depending on the nature of the things they denote. Some linguists have proposed that the use of classifier phrases may be guided less by grammar and more by stylistic or pragmatic concerns on the part of a speaker who may be trying to foreground new or important information. The classifier 个, pronounced gè or ge in Mandarin, also serves as a general classifier, which may often be used in place of other classifiers. Many words that are classifiers today started as full nouns; in some cases their meanings have been gradually bleached away that they are now used only as quantifiers. In Chinese, every quantifier cannot usually quantify a noun itself; instead, the language relies on classifiers, also referred to as measure words, instead of a number or a number of words such as “one person” or “three books” The classifiers did not become a mandatory part of Old Chinese grammar until around 1100 CE; the earliest probably became associated with specific nouns that culturally valued as horses and poems.
The term classifier is also used to refer to a particle without any particular meaning of its own, as in the example above, and measure word denoting a word for a particular quantity or measurement of something, such as “drop”, “cupful”, or “liter” The terms liàngcí, which literally means “measure word”, and liàn, which means “classifier” are often used interchangeably in Chinese. Many other languages of the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area exhibit similar classifier systems, leading to speculation about the origins of the Chinese system. Many nouns denoting flat objects such as tables, papers, beds, and benches use the classifier 条 zhāng, whereas many long and thin objects use tiáo, for example, 盒 hé, the word used to denote boxes of objects, like lightbulbs or books, even though those nouns would be used with their own appropriate count-classifiers if being counted as individual objects. In informal and spoken language, native speakers tend to use this classifier far more than any other, even although they know which classifiers is “correct” when asked. The terms “classifier” and “measureword” are frequentlyused interchangeably liángcì, whichliterally means “Measure word” “Classifier” and “Measure word” is used in Chinese to denote certain words denoting lengths of time, units of currency, etc.
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This page is based on the article Chinese classifier published in Wikipedia (as of Oct. 31, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
