Bare classifier phrases in Sinitic languages: A typological perspective
Bare classifier phrases in Sinitic languages: A typological perspective
A bare classifier phrase refers to one composed of just a classifier and its head noun without any numerals or demonstratives preceding the classifier. Bare classifier phrases ([CL-N] phrases) can be found in most Sinitic languages. However, the syntactic distribution and semantic interpretation of bare classifier phrases may vary in different languages, which allows categorization into one of seven types. This chapter re-examines these special phrases in a typological perspective and puts forward three implicational universals with respect to their syntactic distribution and semantic interpretation. These three implicational universals are: preverbal [CL-N] phrases ⊃ postverbal [CL-N] phrases; preverbal indefinite [CL-N] phrases ⊃ preverbal definite [CL-N] phrases; and postverbal definite [CL-NP] phrases ⊃ postverbal indefinite [CL-N] phrases. Finally, some tentative explanations are offered for the three implicational universals.
Keywords: bare classifier, definiteness, indefiniteness, demonstrative, numeral one, implicational universal, Sinitic language
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .