Classifier (linguistics)

A classifier (abbreviated .mw-parser-output .smallcaps{font-variant:small-caps}clf or cl) is a word or affix that accompanies nouns 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 Korean, Chinese, and Japanese. Classifiers are absent or marginal in European languages. An example of a possible classifier in English is head in phrases like 'five head of cattle'.Am-túDu-ta xobdoKei-ta balisBalis-kei-taSari-pas-zon manuhMekuri-zoniE-khon ghorKitap-kei-khonPani-khiniXap-dalNumeral classifiers exhibit striking worldwide distribution at the global level. The main concentration of numeral classifiers is in a single zone centered in East and Southeast Asia, but reaching out both westwards and eastwards. To the west, numeral classifiers peter out as one proceeds across the South Asian subcontinent; thus, in this particular region, the occurrence of numeral classifiers cross-cuts what has otherwise been characterized as one of the classical examples of a linguistic area, namely, South Asia. However, numeral classifiers pick up again, albeit in optional usage, in parts of western Asia centering on Iran and Turkey; it is not clear whether this should be considered as a continuation of the same large though interrupted isogloss, or as a separate one. To the east, numeral classifiers extend out through the Indonesian archipelago, and then into the Pacific in a grand arc through Micronesia and then down to the southeast, tapering out in New Caledonia and western Polynesia. Interestingly, whereas in the western parts of the Indonesian archipelago numeral classifiers are often optional, in the eastern parts of the archipelago and in Micronesia numeral classifiers tend once more, as in mainland East and Southeast Asia, to be obligatory. Outside this single large zone, numeral classifiers are almost exclusively restricted to a number of smaller hotbeds, in West Africa, the Pacific Northwest, Mesoamerica, and the Amazon basin. In large parts of the world, numeral classifiers are completely absent. A classifier (abbreviated .mw-parser-output .smallcaps{font-variant:small-caps}clf or cl) is a word or affix that accompanies nouns 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 Korean, Chinese, and Japanese. Classifiers are absent or marginal in European languages. An example of a possible classifier in English is head in phrases like 'five head of cattle'. 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 up to several hundred different classifiers. Languages with noun classes (or in particular, genders) tend to have a smaller number of classes. Noun classes are not always dependent on the nouns' meaning but they have a variety of grammatical consequences. A classifier is a word (or in some analyses, a bound morpheme) which accompanies a noun 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 Chinese, illustrate the use of classifiers with a numeral. The classifiers used here are 个 (traditional form 個, pinyin 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.