Classifier Structures in Mandarin Chinese

✍ Scribed by Niina Ning Zhang

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2013
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 332
• Series: Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs [TiLSM]; 263
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This monograph addresses fundamental syntactic issues of classifier constructions, based on a thorough study of a typical classifier language, Mandarin Chinese. It shows that the contrast between count and mass is not binary. Instead, there are two independently attested features: Numerability, the ability of a noun to combine with a numeral directly, and Delimitability, the ability of a noun to be modified by a delimitive modifier, such as size, shape, or boundary modifier. Although all nouns in Chinese are non-count nouns, there is still a mass/non-mass contrast, with mass nouns selected by individuating classifiers and non-mass nouns selected by individual classifiers. Some languages have the counterparts of Chinese individuating classifiers only, some languages have the counterparts of Chinese individual classifiers only, and some other languages have no counterpart of either individual or individuating classifiers of Chinese. The book also reports that unit plurality can be expressed by reduplicative classifiers in the language. Moreover, for the constituency of a numeral expression, an individual, individuating, or kind classifier combines with the noun first and then the numeral is integrated; but a partitive or collective classifier, like a measure word, combines with the numeral first, before the noun is integrated into the whole nominal structure. Furthermore, the book identifies the syntactic positions of various uses of classifiers in the language. A classifier is at a functional head position that has a dependency with a numeral, or a position that has a dependency with a generic or existential quantifier, or a position that represents the singular-plural contrast, or a position that licenses a delimitive modifier when the classifier occurs in a compound.

• This book provides analyses for various uses of classifiers in
  Mandarin Chinese: in numeral expressions, in quantifier expressions,
  in reduplicative forms, and in compounds.
• The study challenges certain widely-adopted assumptions about the
  roles of classifiers with respect to the count-mass contrast and the
  singular-plural contrast.
• It explains the formal contrasts between languages with and without
  numeral classifiers.

✦ Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Classifiers and countability
2.1. Introduction
2.2. Decomposing countability
2.2.1. Identifying two new features syntagmatically
2.2.2. Defining count and mass by the two features
2.2.3. Attesting the two features in co-occurrence restrictions
2.2.4. Attesting the two features in pronominalization
2.2.5. Attesting the two features in shifts
2.2.6. Numerability and number
2.3. The two features in nouns
2.3.1. Numerability of nouns
2.3.2. Delimitability of nouns
2.4. The two features in unit words
2.4.1. CLs and measure words
2.4.2. Unit words that occur with [-Delimitable]
2.4.3. Unit words that occur with [+Delimitable]
2.4.4. Unit words that occur with [±Delimitable]
2.4.5. The CL ge
2.4.6. Unit words as unique Numerability bearers in Chinese
2.4.7. Delimitability of unit words
2.5. Reflections on the studies of countability
2.5.1. What’s new?
2.5.2. The semantic approach to countability
2.5.3. The morphological approach to countability
2.5.4. The multi-criteria approach to countability
2.5.5. Other non-binary analyses of countability
2.5.6. Experimental perspective
2.6. Reflections on the studies of CLs in numeral expressions
2.6.1. The syntactic foundations of the presence of CLs
2.6.2. How special are the CLs of CL languages?
2.6.3. The sortal-mensural contrast and CLs that do not classify
2.6.4. The unreliability of the de and pre-CL adjective arguments
2.6.5. Experimental perspective
2.7. Chapter summary
Chapter 3: Classifiers and quantifiers
3.1. Introduction
3.2. Quantifiers that occur with a unit word
3.3. Quantifiers that occur without a unit word
3.4. The ambiguous cases
3.5. Non-numeral uses of yi ‘one’ in nominals
3.5.1. G-YI: Yi as a generic quantifier
3.5.2. E-YI: Yi as an existential quantifier
3.5.3. M-YI: Yi as a maximal quantifier
3.6. Chapter summary
Chapter 4: Classifiers and plurality
4.1. Introduction
4.1.1. Number in Mandarin Chinese?
4.1.2. General number and optional number marking
4.1.3. Abundant plural
4.2. Unit plurality
4.2.1. RUWs as unit-plurality markers
4.2.2. The productivity
4.2.3. RUWs, E-YI, and distributivity
4.2.4. Definiteness and specificity of RUW nominals
4.2.5. The interactions of numerals and number markers
4.3. Unit singularity
4.3.1. SUWs as unit-singularity markers
4.3.2. The productivity
4.3.3. The problems of the numeral-deletion analysis
4.3.4. Definiteness and specificity of SUW nominals
4.4. Morphological and semantic markedness
4.5. Number marking in CL languages
4.6. Chapter summary
Chapter 5: The syntactic constituency of numeral expressions
5.1. Introduction
5.2. Four arguments for the non-unified analysis
5.2.1. The scope of a left-peripheral modifier
5.2.2. The effect of modifier-association
5.2.3. Semantic selection
5.2.4. The order of size and shape modifiers
5.2.5. Two possible structures
5.3. Invalid arguments
5.3.1. The adjacency of a numeral and a unit word
5.3.2. Syntactic operations on NPs
5.3.3. NP ellipsis
5.3.4. The positions of the partitives duo ‘more’ and ban ‘half’
5.3.5. Other invalid arguments
5.4. Constituency and the readings of numeral expressions
5.4.1. Count and measure
5.4.2. Individual and quantity
5.4.3. Definiteness and specificity
5.5. Constituency and the occurrence of de following a unit word
5.5.1. Background
5.5.2. The quantity-reading condition
5.5.3. Different sources of de
5.6. Chapter summary
Chapter 6: The syntactic positions of classifiers
6.1. Introduction
6.2. The projection of UnitP
6.2.1. Unit words in numeral expressions and the head of UnitP
6.2.2. The Spec-Head relation of a numeral and a unit word
6.2.3. The surface position of numerals and QuantP
6.3. The co-occurrence of QuantP, UnitP, and NumP
6.4. The morphosyntactic properties of pre-unit-word adjectives
6.5. The right- and left-branching numeral constructions
6.5.1. The representations of the right-branching structure
6.5.2. The representation of the left-branching structure
6.5.3. MonP and de
6.6. The structure of attributive numeral expressions
6.7. Various realizations of the head of UnitP
6.7.1. Major typological patterns of the null Unit
6.7.2. A comparison with numeral-oriented approaches
6.8. Chapter summary
Chapter 7: Noun-classifier compounds
7.1. Introduction
7.2. Basic properties of N-CL compounds
7.2.1. The components of N-CL compounds
7.2.2. The distributions and readings of N-CL compounds
7.3. DelP and N-CL compounds
7.3.1. Compound-internal CL as a realization of Del
7.3.2. DelP and delimitable markers
7.4. The non-count status of N-CL compounds
7.5. The relations between the higher and the lower CLs
7.5.1. No multiple individuating
7.5.2. No multiple counting-units
7.5.3. The semantic interactions between the two CLs
7.6. The place-holder CLs
7.6.1. Ge as the higher CL
7.6.2. The CL copying constructions
7.6.3. The alternation possibility
7.6.4. The significance of place-holder CLs
7.7. The syntactic representations of N-CL numeral expressions
7.7.1. The constructions without a place-holder CL
7.7.2. The constructions with a place-holder CL
7.8. Chapter summary
Chapter 8: Conclusions
References
Subject index
Language index