Talk:Classifier (linguistics)

need more
this article is obviously only about classificatory systems of the type found in Chinese & other E & SE Asian languages (i.e. it is clearly biased). Athabaskan languages (e.g. Western Apache, Navajo, Slavey, Koyukon) have another type. feel free to adapt what is at Navajo language or Southern Athabaskan languages. one linguist has identified 4 different types of classification. peace &mdash; ishwar  (S PEAK )  23:33, 2005 May 7 (UTC)

I agree. The systems from austronesian languages, mayan languages should be included, and possibly integrated more with discussion of noun class systems

This article woefully lacks examples. The only example given is 'measure words' in English, which isn't a very fitting choice if the purpose is to help English-readers like me understand how classifiers work in languages where they *are* significant grammatical features (which they're not in English). So if somebody could edit in a few, more significant and/or exotic examples of classifiers, that would be great. Khalil.

Actually, not all linguists agree that classificatory verbs in Athabaskan languages contain classifier morphemes. I believe in Navajo, for example, the classificatory meaning is conflated with other aspects of the meaning of the verb stem, and no separate classifer can be identified. Thus Navajo is said to have 'classificatory verbs' but not 'classifiers' as such. Furthermore, the status of 'classifiers' in signed languages has also been disputed. Adam.

What do you think about me adding some info on classifiers in American Sign Language? The only issue is that some linguists do not like to label them as classifiers. However, much of the research does use the label classifiers. Lesa. Lisa withane (talk) 04:51, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Number of classes
"...while gender systems vary from two to twenty classes at most." 20 classes for gender? I believe there are only 2 or 3 possible (masculine/feminine + neuter). If there were 20 classes, what would they refer to? Why would anyone call it "gender"? In that case, I think, it would simply be an regular class system. --213.6.70.30 11:21, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

-I believe the point is that so-called class(ifier) systems are simply extended gender systems; or putting it differently, that gender systems are impoverished classifier systems. If 'neuter' can be a gender, why not 'round' or 'pointed' or 'made of metal'?

Mcswell 19:01, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Classes
Gender systems are simply a subtype of class systems. Some people say gender system for systems like those of the Bantu languages (which are obligatory and trigger agreement, ie behave just like gender systems but with a larger number of divisions). The article clearly needs to discuss the difference between classifier systems and general class systems (which may indeed have 20 different classes), rather than the difference between classifier systems and the more specific gender type systems. I'd also point out there there isn't a clearly demarked difference between the two: since classifiers often evolve into class systems like those of the Bantu languages, we have a cline rather than a binary opposition, with classifiers at one end and a class system at the other.


 * I have doubts that classifier systems often evolve into a class system. Chinese had plenty of time to do so but did not. Doesn't going from a classifier system to a class system involve far more pervasive changes in a language? And probably could only happen with languages that actually inflect?

Discussion on proposal to merge "Classifiers" with "Measure Words"
Classifiers are distinct from measure words. Measure words allow us to quantify (or count) mass nouns. The measure word is itself the head of the Noun Phrase that contains it -- this is not the case with classifiers. (see section 8.1.2 of "Analyzing Grammar" by Paul R. Kroeger. Cambridge University Press 2005.) By Oborge

-This is not strictly true. Some noun classifiers are the heads of their NPs, depending on the language being considered (that is, whether the classifier or the noun is the head of the NP varies from language to language). See Aikhenvald, Classifiers: A Typology of Noun Classification Devices.

By Chrisdb

-I find both terms unclear, although that may just reflect my ignorance of the literature. My first exposure to these "things" (to use a generic term) was with the Tzeltal (Mayan) language, in which numerals take a suffix indicating the shape of the thing being counted. These were certainly not Measure _Words_, in that they were not _words_: they were suffixes.

My next exposure was to Tucanoan languages in Colombia (and Ecuador). Here the "things" appear after everything but verbs: nouns, numbers, adjectives (if you distinguish adjectives from nouns, a debatable point). Some are clearly suffixes, while others are clearly nouns (and not clitics), and the status (affix vs. word) of some is unclear.

Based on these two exposures (and not knowing anything about other languages that have such systems), it strikes me that "Measure Words" is an inappropriate term, at least if the term is supposed to refer to the morphemes in Tzeltal and Tucanoan. We always used the term "Classifier" in these languages. In Cubeo (one Tucanoan language), these classifiers can be attached to mass nouns, in which case the result is a count noun; but they also attach to count nouns. Some nouns obligatorily take classifiers, others take them optionally. Gender affixes, used on animate nouns, are probably best lumped together with classifiers, used on inanimate nouns (and on animate nouns, e.g. to represent "meat of X").

As for being the "head of the NP", I think that question depends largely on what you mean by "head", and IMHO that's a theory-dependent question.

In any case, the term "measure words" seems misleading to me if it is intended to apply to things that may be affixes.

Mcswell 18:58, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

The "Classifier" and "Measure Words" articles are describing exactly the same thing. They even use examples from the same language (Chinese). The Classifier article describes them just relies more heavily on linguistics viewpoint, while the Measure Word article approaches the concept from a layman's viewpoint. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 114.45.223.131 (talk) 19:25, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Rewrite
This article had little in it, and it was unclear. I decided to be bold, and rewrite it. FilipeS 21:23, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Noun classes vs classifiers
The lead section in this article reads:
 * A classifier, in linguistics, is a word or morpheme used in some languages to classify a noun according to its meaning. Classifier systems should not be confused with noun classes, which often categorize nouns in ways independent from meaning, such as according to morphology.

Yet the noun class article gives the first of "three main ways by which natural languages categorize nouns into noun classes" as "according to similarities in their meaning (semantic criterion)". The classifier article also states that "there is no clearly demarked difference between the two: since classifiers often evolve into class systems, they are two extremes of a continuum."

I wonder if the second sentence of the lead section couldn't be modified a little, to something like "Linguists usually distinguish between classifier systems and noun classes, although the two terms may overlap in meaning". ??

ntennis 02:05, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

"Noun classifiers are always free lexical items that occur in the same noun phrase as the noun they qualify. They never form a morphological unit with the noun, and there is never agreement marking on the verb."

— what about Nivkh? There are markers very similar to numeral classifiers, but which function as bound morphemes suffixed to the numeral (in many cases even fused with the numeral root). Chokingyou (talk) 21:51, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

English
Should mention English analogues, such as "three head of cattle". AnonMoos 07:30, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Simplified chinese
Using simplified chinese (三个学生, etc.) would be clearer for non-chinese people.192.54.193.53 (talk) 09:47, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Classifier languages
It might be nice to have a footer template listing "classifier languages" (ie, languages that have count-classifiers&mdash;just about every language has mass-classifiers). Any thoughts? I have several sources with decent lists of them (Keith Allen's 1977 Language article, Collete Craig's book Noun classes and categorization, and some others), so it wouldn't be OR. r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 02:31, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Chinese classifier
If anyone is interested, the article Chinese classifier is currently up for FAC, at Featured article candidates/Chinese classifier/archive2; any comments would be welcome. r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 16:17, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Chinese classifiers
I'm not sure whether this should be changed, but this article contains a small error about Mandarin. The text has "For instance, in Mandarin Chinese, the general noun classifier for humans is ge (個), and it is used for counting humans, whatever they are called:"

However, there is another classifier for humans used in polite contexts, wei (位), most often used with respectful words for people like 老师 (lao shi, teacher) or 客人 (guest), but it can be used with the plain word for person 人, especially in formal writing. I don't think there is any hard-and-fast rule about when it is appropriate to use wei and when ge, but Chinese has a pretty substantial division into formal and informal language and in the wrong context either would look very strange.

At any rate, I'm not a linguist and not sure if this merits changing the article, but there it is. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.250.46.85 (talk) 06:40, 16 January 2012 (UTC)


 * That is all true but kind of distracting from the main introductory point being made in that section, which is that different semantic categories of objects often have different classifiers. All his stuff about 个/位, and more, is discussed in more detail in the article Chinese classifier. r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 07:15, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Giving some comparative colour between classifier use in the 4 sino-character languages?
Just an explanatory note that Rjanag and myself had a bit of talk after a recent edit where I added (i) Vietnamese as the 4th sino-character language with classifiers, (ii) I also added in "three shirts" to provide a comparative example across all 4, also (iii) I added in the local name liangci etc in brackets for the languages - which (iii) Rjanag removed as being duplication of what is found on the main articles anyway - a revert I consider reasonable at this point. What would be useful, would be brief/relevant comparative information - since all 4 sino-character based languages share some characteristics in the use of classifiers - what is different, what is the same. In ictu oculi (talk) 10:37, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Misrepresenting Japanese?
We're given examples like 鉛筆五本 "enpitsu go-hon" as if the "go-hon" is somehow attached to "enpitsu". But then we have 鉛筆を五本 "enpitsu wo gohon" and 五本の鉛筆 "gohon no enpitu". I don't know what the sources say, but this should be clarified so it doesn't come off as, say, some elaborate plural form or something. Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 03:23, 19 February 2016 (UTC)


 * I don't see the latter two anywhere in the article. r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 20:48, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Sorry, "then we have" means "then we have in the Japanese language", not "in the article". Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 22:45, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Classifiers (language) vs. determinatives (writing systems)
I added a section header to distinguish classifiers more clearly from determinatives. The former are a linguistic feature while the other are a common feature in non-alphabetic writing systems. While there are indeed some interesting conceptual similarities, they are clearly two very distinct concepts. Leaving them in the same section may lead the casual reader (think "school research report") to conclude that Egyptian (Akkadian, Luwian) had classifiers => I hope splitting these out makes sense to everybody. The situation is similar to noun classes, e.g. in Bantu - a similar concept, but not the same (and rightfully already broken out into a separate section in the same article). — Preceding unsigned comment added by MikuChan39 (talk • contribs) 08:45, 28 November 2018 (UTC)