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A classifier ( abbreviated or ) is a
word A word is a basic element of language that carries an objective or practical meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no conse ...
or
affix In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English ''-ness'' and ''pre-'', or inflectional, like English plural ''-s'' and past tense ''-ed''. They ...
that accompanies
noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, ...
s and can be considered to "classify" a noun depending on the type of its referent. It is also sometimes called a measure word or counter word. Classifiers play an important role in certain languages, especially East Asian languages, including Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese. Classifiers are absent or marginal in European languages. An example of a possible classifier in
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...
is ''piece'' in phrases like "three pieces of paper". In languages that have classifiers, they are often used when the noun is being counted, that is, when it appears with a numeral. In such languages, a phrase such as "three people" is often required to be expressed as "three ''X'' (of) people", where ''X'' is a classifier appropriate to the noun for "people". Classifiers sometimes have other functions too; in Chinese, they are commonly used when a noun is preceded by a demonstrative (word meaning "this" or "that"). Chinese classifiers are also commonly called measure words, although some writers make a distinction between the two terms. In American Sign Language, particular classifier handshapes represent a noun's orientation in space. There are similarities between classifier systems and noun classes, although there are significant differences. Languages with classifiers may have hundreds of classifiers. Languages with noun classes (or in particular,
gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most culture ...
s) tend to have a smaller number of classifiers. Noun classes are not always dependent on the nouns' meaning but they have a variety of grammatical consequences.


Overview

A classifier is a word (or in some analyses, a
bound morpheme In linguistics, a bound morpheme is a morpheme (the elementary unit of morphosyntax) that can appear only as part of a larger expression; a free morpheme (or unbound morpheme) is one that can stand alone. A bound morpheme is a type of bound form, ...
) which accompanies a
noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, ...
in certain grammatical contexts, and generally reflects some kind of conceptual classification of nouns, based principally on features of their referents. Thus a language might have one classifier for nouns representing persons, another for nouns representing flat objects, another for nouns denoting periods of time, and so on. The assignment of classifier to noun may also be to some degree unpredictable, with certain nouns taking certain classifiers by historically established convention. The situations in which classifiers may or must appear depend on the grammar of the language in question, but they are frequently required when a noun is accompanied by a numeral. They are therefore sometimes known (particularly in the context of languages such as Japanese) as counter words. They may also be used when a noun is accompanied by a demonstrative (a word such as "this" or "that"). The following examples, from
Standard Mandarin Standard Chinese ()—in linguistics Standard Northern Mandarin or Standard Beijing Mandarin, in common speech simply Mandarin, better qualified as Standard Mandarin, Modern Standard Mandarin or Standard Mandarin Chinese—is a modern standa ...
Chinese, illustrate the use of classifiers with a numeral. The classifiers used here are 个 (
traditional A tradition is a belief or behavior (folk custom) passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examples include holidays or ...
form 個,
pinyin Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese fo ...
''gè''), used (among other things) with nouns for humans; 棵 ''kē'', used with nouns for trees; 只 (隻) ''zhī'', used with nouns for certain animals, including birds; and 条 (條) ''tiáo'', used with nouns for certain long flexible objects. ( Plurals of Chinese nouns are not normally marked in any way; the same form of the noun is used for both singular and plural.) In fact the first of these classifiers, 个 (個) ''gè'', is also often used in informal speech as a general classifier, with almost any noun, taking the place of more specific classifiers. The noun in such phrases may be omitted, if the classifier alone (and the context) is sufficient to indicate what noun is intended. For example, in answering a question: Languages which make systematic use of classifiers include Chinese, Japanese, Korean,
Southeast Asian languages There have been various classification schemes for Southeast Asian languages (see the articles for the respective language families). Language families The five established major language families are: * Kra–Dai * Austronesian *Austroasiatic * Hm ...
,
Bengali Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to: *something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia * Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region * Bengali language, the language they speak ** Bengali alphabet, the w ...
, Assamese, Persian, Austronesian languages, Mayan languages and others. A less typical example of classifiers is found in
Southern Athabaskan Southern Athabaskan (also Apachean) is a subfamily of Athabaskan languages spoken primarily in the Southwestern United States (including Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah) with two outliers in Oklahoma and Texas. The language is spoken to ...
. Classifier handshapes are found in
sign language Sign languages (also known as signed languages) are languages that use the visual-manual modality to convey meaning, instead of spoken words. Sign languages are expressed through manual articulation in combination with non-manual markers. Sign ...
s, although these have a somewhat different grammatical function. Classifiers are often derived from nouns (or occasionally other parts of speech), which have become specialized as classifiers, or may retain other uses besides their use as classifiers. Classifiers, like other words, are sometimes borrowed from other languages. A language may be said to have dozens or even hundreds of different classifiers. However, such enumerations often also include measure words.


Classifiers versus measure words

Measure words play a similar role to classifiers, except that they denote a particular quantity of something (a drop, a cupful, a pint, etc.), rather than the inherent countable units associated with a
count noun In linguistics, a count noun (also countable noun) is a noun that can be modified by a quantity and that occurs in both singular and plural forms, and that can co-occur with quantificational determiners like ''every'', ''each'', ''several'', e ...
. Classifiers are used with count nouns; measure words can be used with mass nouns (e.g. "two pints of mud"), and can also be used when a count noun's quantity is not described in terms of its inherent countable units (e.g. "two pints of acorns"). However, the terminological distinction between classifiers and measure words is often blurred – classifiers are commonly referred to as measure words in some contexts, such as Chinese language teaching, and measure words are sometimes called ''mass-classifiers'' or similar.


Examples by language


European languages

Classifiers are not generally a feature of
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...
or other European languages, although classifier-like constructions are found with certain nouns. A commonly cited English example is the word ''head'' in phrases such as "five head of cattle": the word ''cattle'' (for some speakers) is an uncountable (mass) noun, and requires the word ''head'' to enable its units to be counted. The parallel construction exists in
French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
: ''une tête de bétail'' ("one head of cattle"), in Spanish: ''una cabeza de ganado'' ("one head of cattle") and in Italian: ''un capo di bestiame'' ("one head of cattle"). Note the difference between "five head of cattle" (meaning five animals), and "five heads of cattle" (identical to "five cattle's heads", meaning specifically their heads). A similar phrase used by
florist Floristry is the production, commerce, and trade in flowers. It encompasses flower care and handling, floral design and arrangement, merchandising, production, display and flower delivery. Wholesale florists sell bulk flowers and related su ...
s is "ten stem of roses" (meaning roses on their stems). European languages naturally use measure words. These are required for counting in the case of mass nouns, and some can also be used with count nouns. For example, one can have a ''glass'' of beer, and a ''handful'' of coins. The English construction with ''of'' is paralleled in many languages, although in German (and similarly in Dutch and the Scandinavian languages) the two words are simply juxtaposed, e.g. one says ''ein Glas Bier'' (literally "a glass beer", with no word for "of"). Slavic languages put the second noun in the
genitive case In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can a ...
(e.g. Russian ''чаша пива'' (), literally "a glass beer's"), but Bulgarian, having lost the Slavic case system, uses expressions identical to German (e.g. ''чаша пиво''). Certain nouns are associated with particular measure words or other classifier-like words that enable them to be counted. For example, ''paper'' is often counted in ''sheets'' as in "five sheets of paper". Usage or non-usage of measure words may yield different meanings, e.g. ''five papers'' is grammatically equally correct but refers to newspapers or academic papers. Some inherently plural nouns require the word ' (or its equivalent) to enable reference to a single object or specified number of objects, as in "a pair of scissors", "three pairs of pants", or the French ''une paire de lunettes'' ("a pair of (eye)glasses").


Australian Aboriginal Languages

Australian Aboriginal languages The Indigenous languages of Australia number in the hundreds, the precise number being quite uncertain, although there is a range of estimates from a minimum of around 250 (using the technical definition of 'language' as non-mutually intellig ...
are known for often having extensive noun class systems based on semantic criteria. In many cases, a given noun can be identified as a member of a given class via an adjacent classifier, which can either form a hyponym construction with a specific noun, or act as a generic noun on its own.


Kuuk Thaayorre

In the following example from Kuuk Thaayorre, the specific borrowed noun ''tin.meat'' 'tinned meat' is preceded by its generic classifier ''minh'' 'meat.' In the next example, the same classifier ''minh'' stands in on its own for a generic crocodile (''punc''), another member of the ''minh'' class: Classifiers and specific nouns in Kuuk Thaayorre can also co-occupy the head of a noun phrase to form something like a compound or complex noun as in ''ngat minh.patp'' ' hawk' which is the complex noun meaning 'stingray'.


Diyari

Another example of this kind of hyponym construction can be seen in Diyari: See the nine Diyari classifiers below


Ngalakgan

Contrast the above with
Ngalakgan The Ngalakgan are an indigenous Australian people of the Northern Territory. Language Ngalakgan is generally classified as a member of the Gunwinyguan family. Country Ngalakgan territory covered an estimated , north of the Roper River as far a ...
in which classifiers are prefixes on the various phrasal heads of the entire noun phrase (including modifiers): Ngalakgan has fewer noun classes than many Australian Languages, the complete set of its class prefixes are below:


Bengali, Assamese, Maithili and Nepali

Atypically for an Indo-European language,
Bengali Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to: *something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia * Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region * Bengali language, the language they speak ** Bengali alphabet, the w ...
makes use of classifiers. Every noun in this language must have its corresponding classifier when used with a numeral or other quantifier. Most nouns take the generic classifier ''ṭa'', although there are many more specific measure words, such as ''jon'', which is only used to count humans. Still, there are many fewer measure words in Bengali than in Chinese or Japanese. As in Chinese, Bengali nouns are not inflected for number. Similar to the situation in Chinese, measuring nouns in Bengali without their corresponding measure words (e.g. ''aṭ biṛal'' instead of ''aṭ-ṭa biṛal'' "eight cats") would typically be considered ungrammatical. However, it is common to omit the classifier when it counts a noun that is not in the
nominative case In grammar, the nominative case ( abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or (in Latin and formal variants of Eng ...
(e.g., (eight cats-possessive country ), or (five ghosts-instrumental ate)) or when the number is very large (e.g., ''ek sho lok esechhe'' ("One hundred people have come.")). Classifiers may also be dropped when the focus of the sentence is not on the actual counting but on a statement of fact (e.g., ''amar char chhele'' (I-possessive four boy, I have four sons)). The -ṭa suffix comes from /goṭa/ 'piece', and is also used as a definite article. Omitting the noun and preserving the classifier is grammatical and common. For example, ''Shudhu êk-jon thakbe.'' (lit. "Only one-MW will remain.") would be understood to mean "Only one person will remain.", since ''jon'' can only be used to count humans. The word ''lok'' "person" is implied. Maithili,
Nepali Nepali or Nepalese may refer to : Concerning Nepal * Anything of, from, or related to Nepal * Nepali people, citizens of Nepal * Nepali language, an Indo-Aryan language found in Nepal, the current official national language and a language spoken ...
and Assamese have systems very similar to Bengali's. Maithili uses for objects and for humans; similarly, Nepali has (-वटा) for objects and - (-जना) for humans. Assamese, Chittagonian, Sylheti and other Bengali-Assamese languages have more classifiers than Bengali. Persian has a scheme very similar to the Indo-Aryan languages Bengali, Assamese, Maithili and Nepali.


Persian

Although not always used in written language, Persian uses classifiers regularly in spoken word. Persian has two general-use classifiers, دانه (''dāne'') and تا (''tā''), the former of which is used with singular nouns, while the latter is used with plural nouns. In addition to general-use classifiers, Persian also has several specific classifiers, including the following:


Burmese

In Burmese, classifiers, in the form of particles, are used when counting or measuring nouns. They immediately follow the numerical quantification. Nouns to which classifiers refer can be omitted if the context allows, because many classifiers have implicit meanings.


Thai

Thai employs classifiers in the widest range of NP constructions compared to similar classifier languages from the area. Classifiers are obligatory for nouns followed by numerals in Thai. Nouns in Thai are counted by a specific classifier, which are usually grammaticalized nouns. An example of a grammaticalized noun functioning as a classifier is คน (khon). ''Khon'' is used for people (except monks and royalty) and literally translates to ''person''. The general form for numerated nouns in Thai is ''noun-numeral-classifier''. Similar to Mandarin Chinese, classifiers in Thai are also used when the noun is accompanied by a demonstrative. However, this is not obligatory in the case of demonstratives. Demonstratives also require a different word order than for numerals. The general scheme for demonstratives is ''noun-classifier-demonstrative''. In some instances, classifiers are also used to denote singularity. Thai nouns are bare nominals and are ambiguous regarding number. In order to differentiate between the expression "this child" vs. "these children", a classifier is added to the noun followed by a demonstrative. This 'singularity effect' is apparent in เด็กคนนี้ (child-classifier-this) referring exclusively to one child as opposed to เด็กนี้ (child this), which is vague in terms of number. Combining nouns with adjectives could be simply done without the use of classifiers such as รถเก่า (''rot kao'', old car), it is sometimes necessary to add a classifier in order to distinguish the specific object from a group e.g รถคันเก่า (''rot khan kao'', the old car). Some quantifiers require classifiers in Thai. It has been claimed that quantifiers which do not require classifiers are
adjuncts In brewing, adjuncts are unmalted grains (such as corn, rice, rye, oats, barley, and wheat) or grain products used in brewing beer which supplement the main mash ingredient (such as malted barley). This is often done with the intention of cut ...
and those which do are part of the functional structure of the noun phrase. Quantifiers which require a classifier include ทุก (''thuk'', every) บาง (''bang'', some). This is also the case of approximations e.g. หมาบางตัว (''ma bang tua'', some dogs). Negative quantification is simply expressed by adding ไม่มี (''mai mi'', there are not) in front of the noun. Complex nominal phrases can yield expressions containing several classifiers. This phenomenon is rather unique to Thai, compared to other classifier languages from the region.


Chinese

Although classifiers were not often used in
Classical Chinese Classical Chinese, also known as Literary Chinese (古文 ''gǔwén'' "ancient text", or 文言 ''wényán'' "text speak", meaning "literary language/speech"; modern vernacular: 文言文 ''wényánwén'' "text speak text", meaning "literar ...
, in all modern Chinese varieties such as Mandarin, nouns are normally required to be accompanied by a classifier or measure word when they are qualified by a numeral or by a demonstrative. Examples with numerals have been given above in the Overview section. An example with a demonstrative is the phrase for "this person" — 这个人 ''zhè ge rén'', where the character 个 is the classifier that literally meaning "individual" or "single entity", so the entire phrase means "this ''individual'' person" or "this single person". A similar example is the phrase for "these people" — 这群人 ''zhè qún rén'', where the classifier 群 means "group" or "herd", so the phrase literally means "this group fpeople" or "this crowd". The noun in a classifier phrase may be omitted, if the context and choice of classifier make the intended noun obvious. An example of this again appears in the Overview section above. The choice of a classifier for each noun is somewhat arbitrary and must be memorized by learners of Chinese, but often relates to the object's physical characteristics. For example, the character 条 ''tiáo'' originally means "
twig A twig is a thin, often short, branch of a tree or bush. The buds on the twig are an important diagnostic characteristic, as are the abscission scars where the leaves have fallen away. The color, texture, and patterning of the twig bark ar ...
" or "thin
branch A branch, sometimes called a ramus in botany, is a woody structural member connected to the central trunk of a tree (or sometimes a shrub). Large branches are known as boughs and small branches are known as twigs. The term '' twig'' usuall ...
", is now used most often as a classifier for thin, elongated things such as
rope A rope is a group of yarns, plies, fibres, or strands that are twisted or braided together into a larger and stronger form. Ropes have tensile strength and so can be used for dragging and lifting. Rope is thicker and stronger than similarl ...
,
snake Snakes are elongated, limbless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes . Like all other squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more ...
and
fish Fish are Aquatic animal, aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack Limb (anatomy), limbs with Digit (anatomy), digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and Chondrichthyes, cartilaginous and bony fish as we ...
, and can be translated as "(a) length (of)", "strip" or "line". Also not all classifiers derive from nouns; for example, the character 張/张 ''zhāng'' is originally a verb meaning "to span (a bow)", and is now used as a classifier to denote squarish flat objects such as paper, hide or (the surface of) table, and can be more or less translated as "sheet". The character 把 ''bǎ'' was originally a verb meaning ''to grasp/grip'', is now more commonly used as the noun for " handle", and can also used as the classifier for "handful". Technically a distinction is made between classifiers (or ''count-classifiers''), which are used only with
count noun In linguistics, a count noun (also countable noun) is a noun that can be modified by a quantity and that occurs in both singular and plural forms, and that can co-occur with quantificational determiners like ''every'', ''each'', ''several'', e ...
s and do not generally carry any meaning of their own, and measure words (or ''mass-classifiers''), which can be used also with mass nouns and specify a particular quantity (such as "bottle"
f water F, or f, is the sixth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''ef'' (pronounced ), and the plural is ''efs''. Hist ...
or "pound" f fruit. Less formally, however, the term "measure word" is used interchangeably with "classifier".


Gilbertese

In Gilbertese, classifiers must be used as a suffix when counting. The appropriate classifier is chosen based on the kind and shape of the noun, and combines with the numeral, sometimes adopting several different forms. There is a general classifier (-''ua'') which exists in simple numbers (te-ua-na 1; uo-ua 2; ten-ua 3; a-ua 4; nima-ua 5; until 9) and is used when there is no specific classifier and for counting periods of time and years; and specific classifiers like: * -man (for people, animals, small fishes; ''te man'' alone means bird (''man-ni-kiba'', flying animal) or small bug); * -ai (for big fishes and cetaceans); * -waa (for canoes and, by extension, all vehicles (''a-waa te waanikiba'' means "4 planes" - ''waa-ni-kiba'', literal meaning is "flying canoe");


Japanese

In Japanese grammar, classifiers must be used with a number when counting nouns. The appropriate classifier is chosen based on the kind and shape of the noun, and combines with the numeral, sometimes adopting several different forms.


Korean

The
Korean language Korean (South Korean: , ''hangugeo''; North Korean: , ''chosŏnmal'') is the native language for about 80 million people, mostly of Korean descent. It is the official and national language of both North Korea and South Korea (geographica ...
has classifiers in the form of suffixes which attach to numerals. For example, ''jang'' (장) is used to count sheets of paper, blankets, leaves, and other similar objects: "ten bus tickets" could be translated ''beoseu pyo yeol-jang'' (버스 표 열 장), literally "bus ticket ten- lassifier.


Malay/Indonesian

In
Malay grammar Malay and Indonesian grammar is the body of rules that describe the structure of expressions in the Malay language (Brunei, Malaysia, and Singapore) and Indonesian (Indonesia and Timor Leste). This includes the structure of words, phrases, claus ...
, classifiers are used to count all nouns, including concrete nouns, abstract nouns and phrasal nouns. Nouns are not reduplicated for plural form when used with classifiers, definite or indefinite, although Mary Dalrymple and Suriel Mofu give counterexamples where reduplication and classifiers co-occur. In informal language, classifiers can be used with numbers alone without the nouns if the context is well known. The Malay term for classifiers is ''penjodoh bilangan'', while the term in Indonesian is ''kata penggolong''.


Vietnamese

Vietnamese uses a similar set of classifiers to Chinese, Japanese and Korean.


Khmer

Khmer (Cambodian) also uses classifiers, although they can quite frequently be omitted. Since it is a
head-first In linguistics, head directionality is a proposed parameter that classifies languages according to whether they are head-initial (the head of a phrase precedes its complements) or head-final (the head follows its complements). The head is the ...
language, the classifier phrase (number plus classifier) comes after the noun.


American Sign Language

In American Sign Language classifier constructions are used to express position, stative description (size and shape), and how objects are handled manually. The particular hand shape used to express any of these constructions is what functions as the classifier. Various hand shapes can represent whole entities; show how objects are handled or instruments are used; represent limbs; and be used to express various characteristics of entities such as dimensions, shape, texture, position, and path and manner of motion. While the label of classifiers has been accepted by many sign language linguists, some argue that these constructions do not parallel oral-language classifiers in all respects and prefer to use other terms, such as polymorphemic or polycomponential signs. Examples: *1 hand shape: used for individuals standing or long thin objects *A hand shape: used for compact objects *C hand shape: used for cylindrical objects *3 hand shape: used for ground vehicles *ILY hand shape: used for aircraft


Global distribution

Classifiers are part of the grammar of most East Asian languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Malay, Burmese, Thai, Hmong, and the
Bengali Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to: *something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia * Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region * Bengali language, the language they speak ** Bengali alphabet, the w ...
and
Munda languages The Munda languages are a group of closely related languages spoken by about nine million people in India and Bangladesh. Historically, they have been called the Kolarian languages. They constitute a branch of the Austroasiatic language family ...
just to the west of the East and Southeast Asia linguistic area. They are present in many
Australian Aboriginal languages The Indigenous languages of Australia number in the hundreds, the precise number being quite uncertain, although there is a range of estimates from a minimum of around 250 (using the technical definition of 'language' as non-mutually intellig ...
, including Yidiny and Murrinhpatha. Among
indigenous languages of the Americas Over a thousand indigenous languages are spoken by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. These languages cannot all be demonstrated to be related to each other and are classified into a hundred or so language families (including a large nu ...
, classifiers are present in the
Pacific Northwest The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Thou ...
, especially among the
Tsimshianic languages The Tsimshianic languages are a family of languages spoken in northwestern British Columbia and in Southeast Alaska on Annette Island and Ketchikan. All Tsimshianic languages are endangered, some with only around 400 speakers. Only around 2,170 ...
, and in many languages of Mesoamerica, including
Classic Maya A classic is an outstanding example of a particular style; something of lasting worth or with a timeless quality; of the first or highest quality, class, or rank – something that exemplifies its class. The word can be an adjective (a '' ...
and most of its modern derivatives. They also occur in some languages of the Amazon Basin (most famously Yagua) and a very small number of West African languages. In contrast, classifiers are entirely absent not only from European languages, but also from many languages of northern Asia (
Uralic The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian lan ...
, Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic and mainland Paleosiberian languages), and also from the indigenous languages of the southern parts of both North and South America. In Austronesian languages, classifiers are quite common and may have been acquired as a result of contact with
Mon–Khmer languages The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. These languages are scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China and are t ...
but the most remote members such as Malagasy and Hawaiian have lost them. The ''
World Atlas of Language Structures The World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) is a database of structural ( phonological, grammatical, lexical) properties of languages gathered from descriptive materials. It was first published by Oxford University Press as a book with CD-R ...
'' has
global map
showing 400 languages an
chapter text
including geographical discussion:


Noun classifiers versus noun classes

The concept of noun classifier is distinct from that of noun class. *Classifier systems typically involve 20 or more, or even several hundred, classifiers (separate lexemes that co-occur with nouns). Noun class systems (including systems of
grammatical gender In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all noun ...
) typically comprise a closed set of two to twenty classes, into which all nouns in the language are divided. *Not every noun need take a classifier, and many nouns can occur with different classifiers. In a language with noun classes, each noun typically belongs to one and only one class, which is usually shown by a word form or an accompanying article and functions grammatically. The same referent can be referred to by nouns with different noun classes, such as ''die Frau'' "the woman" (feminine) and ''das Weib'' "the woman (archaic, pejorative)" (neuter) in
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...
. *Noun classes are typically marked by
inflection In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and ...
, i.e. through
bound morpheme In linguistics, a bound morpheme is a morpheme (the elementary unit of morphosyntax) that can appear only as part of a larger expression; a free morpheme (or unbound morpheme) is one that can stand alone. A bound morpheme is a type of bound form, ...
s which cannot appear alone in a sentence. Class may be marked on the noun itself, but will also often be marked on other constituents in the noun phrase or in the sentence that show
agreement Agreement may refer to: Agreements between people and organizations * Gentlemen's agreement, not enforceable by law * Trade agreement, between countries * Consensus, a decision-making process * Contract, enforceable in a court of law ** Meeting ...
with the noun. 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 Agreement may refer to: Agreements between people and organizations * Gentlemen's agreement, not enforceable by law * Trade agreement, between countries * Consensus, a decision-making process * Contract, enforceable in a court of law ** Meeting ...
marking on the
verb A verb () is a word ( part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descr ...
. *The classifier occurs in only some syntactic environments. In addition, use of the classifier may be influenced by the
pragmatics In linguistics and related fields, pragmatics is the study of how context contributes to meaning. The field of study evaluates how human language is utilized in social interactions, as well as the relationship between the interpreter and the int ...
of style and the choice of written or spoken mode. Often, the more formal the style, the richer the variety of classifiers used, and the higher the frequency of their use. Noun class markers are mandatory under all circumstances. *Noun classifiers are usually derived from words used as names of concrete, discrete, moveable objects. Noun class markers are typically
affix In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English ''-ness'' and ''pre-'', or inflectional, like English plural ''-s'' and past tense ''-ed''. They ...
es without any literal meaning. Nevertheless, there is no clearly demarked difference between the two: since classifiers often evolve into class systems, they are two extremes of a continuum.


Conceptual similarity to determinatives (writing systems)


Ancient Egyptian scripts, Cuneiform (Sumerian, Akkadian and Hittite), Luwian Hieroglyphs and Chinese

The Egyptian hieroglyphic script is formed of a repertoire of hundreds of graphemes which play different semiotic roles. Almost every word ends with an unpronounced grapheme (the so-called " determinative") that carries no additional phonetic value of its own. As such, this hieroglyph is a "mute" icon, which does not exist on the spoken level of language but supplies the word in question, through its iconic meaning alone, with extra semantic information. In recent years, this system of unpronounced graphemes was compared to classifiers in spoken languages. The results show that the two systems, those of unpronounced graphemic classifiers and those of pronounced classifiers in classifier languages obey similar rules of use and function. The graphemic classifiers of the hieroglyphic script presents an emic image of knowledge organization in the Ancient Egyptian mind. Similar graphemic classifiers are known also in Hieroglyphic Luwian and in Chinese scripts.Chen, Y. 2016. "The Prototypical Determinatives in Egyptian and Chinese Writing." Scripta 8: 101-126.


See also

*
American Sign Language grammar The grammar of American Sign Language (ASL) is the best studied of any sign language, though research is still in its infancy, dating back only to William Stokoe in the 1960s. Morphology ASL morphology is to a large extent iconic. This shows ...
* Southern Athabaskan grammar: Classificatory verbs * Noun class * Analytic language *
Determiner (linguistics) A determiner, also called determinative ( abbreviated ), is a word, phrase, or affix that occurs together with a noun or noun phrase and generally serves to express the reference of that noun or noun phrase in the context. That is, a determi ...


References


Bibliography

* Dixon, R. M. W. (1982). Classifiers in Yidiny. In R. M. W. Dixon (ed.), ''Where have all the adjectives gone?'' (pp. 185–205.) Berlin: Mouton. * Walsh, M. (1997). Noun classes, nominal classification and generics in Murrinhpatha. In M. Harvey & N. Reid (eds.), ''Nominal classification in Aboriginal Australia'' (pp. 255–292). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. * Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. (2000). ''Classifiers: A typology of noun categorization devices''. Oxford studies in typology and linguistic theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. . * Allan, Keith. (1977). Classifiers. ''Language'', 53, 2, 285–311. * Craig, Colette. (ed.) (1986). ''Noun Classes and Categorization: Proceedings of a Symposium on Categorization and Noun Classification, Eugene, Oregon, October 1983''. Typological Studies in Language, 7. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. * Rude, Noel. (1986). Graphemic classifiers in Egyptian hieroglyphics and Mesopotamian cuneiform. In Colette Grinevald (ed.), ''Noun Classes and Categorization'' (pp. 133-138.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins. * Senft, Gunther. (ed.) (2008). Systems of nominal classification. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. * Grinevald (Craig), Colette. (2004). "97. Classifiers," in: C. Lehmann, J. Mugdan et al. (eds.), Morphology, An International Handbook on Inflection and Word-Formation. Volume 2. Berlin – New York: De Gruyter, 1016–1032. * Goldwasser, Orly & Colette Grinevald (Craig) (2012). "What Are Determinatives Good For?," in: E. Grossman, S. Polis & J. Winand (eds.), Lexical Semantics in Ancient Egyptian. Hamburg: Widmaier, 17–53. * Bauer, Brigitte. L. M. (2017). Nominal Apposition in Indo-European Its Forms and Functions, and Its Evolution in Latin-Romance. Berlin – Boston: De Gruyter. Chapter 3: 62–88.


External links


SIL: Glossary of Linguistic Terms: What is a noun class?
{{DEFAULTSORT:Classifier (Linguistics) Parts of speech