Examples of using Count-classifiers in English and their translations into Serbian
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Colloquial
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Ecclesiastic
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Computer
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Latin
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Cyrillic
On the other hand, count-classifiers are not inherently mandatory, and are absent from most languages.
Within the set of nominal classifiers, linguists generally draw a distinction between“count-classifiers” and“mass-classifiers”.
In other words, count-classifiers tend to come from words that once had specific meaning but lost it(a process known as semantic bleaching).
Linguists and typologists such as Joseph Greenberg have suggested that specific count-classifiers are semantically"redundant", repeating information present within the noun.
In this way, count-classifiers might not serve an abstract grammatical or cognitive function, but may help in communication by making important information more noticeable and drawing attention to it.
In research on classifier systems, and Chinese classifiers in particular,it has been asked why count-classifiers(as opposed to mass-classifiers) exist at all.
Finally, a single word may have multiple count-classifiers that convey different meanings altogether-in fact, the choice of a classifier can even influence the meaning of a noun.
The range is so large because some of these estimates include all types of classifiers while others include only count-classifiers, and because the idea of what constitutes a"classifier" has changed over time.
Most modern count-classifiers are derived from words that originally were free-standing nouns in older varieties of Chinese, and have since been grammaticalized to become bound morphemes.
While mass-classifiers do not necessarily bear any semantic relationship to the noun with which they are used(e.g. box and book are not related in meaning, butone can still say"a box of books"), count-classifiers do.
Examples such as this suggest that mass-classifiers predate count-classifiers by several centuries, although they did not appear in the same word order as they do today.
True count-classifiers are used for naming or counting a single count noun, and have no direct translation in English; for example, 一本书(yì běn shū, one-CL book) can only be translated in English as"one book" or"a book".
In everyday speech, people often use the term"measure word", or its literal Chinese equivalent 量词 liàngcí,to cover all Chinese count-classifiers and mass-classifiers, but the types of words grouped under this term are not all the same.
Furthermore, count-classifiers cannot be used with mass nouns: just as an English speaker cannot ordinarily say*"five muds", a Chinese speaker cannot say*五个泥(wǔ ge nì, five-CL mud).
A classifier categorizes a class of nouns by picking out some salient perceptual properties… which are permanently associated with entities named by the class of nouns; a measure word does not categorize but denotes the quantity of the entity named by a noun.- Tai(1994, pp. 2), emphasis added Within theset of nominal classifiers, linguists generally draw a distinction between"count-classifiers" and"mass-classifiers".
Nevertheless, 个 has not completely replaced other count-classifiers, and there are still many situations in which it would be inappropriate to substitute it for the required specific classifier.
While count-classifiers have no direct English translation, mass-classifiers often do: phrases with count-classifiers such as 一个人(yí ge rén, one-CL person) can only be translated as"one person" or"a person", whereas those with mass-classifiers such as 一群人(yì qún rén, one-crowd-person) can be translated as"a crowd of people".
All languages, including English,have mass-classifiers, but count-classifiers are unique to certain"classifier languages", and are not a part of English grammar apart from a few exceptional cases such as head of livestock.
Although true count-classifiers had not appeared yet, mass-classifiers were common in this time, with constructions such as"wine- six- yǒu"(the word 酉 yǒu represented a wine container) meaning"six yǒu of wine".
One proposed explanation for the existence of count-classifiers is that they serve more of a cognitive purpose than a practical one: in other words, they provide a linguistic way for speakers to organize or categorize real objects.
The difference between count-classifiers and mass-classifiers can be described as one of quantifying versus categorizing: in other words, mass-classifiers create a unit by which to measure something(i.e. boxes, groups, chunks,pieces, etc.), whereas count-classifiers simply name an existing item.
On the other hand,proponents of prototype theory propose that count-classifiers may not have innate definitions, but are associated with a noun that is prototypical of that category, and nouns that have a"family resemblance" with the prototype noun will want to use the same classifier.
The distinction between count-classifiers and mass-classifiers is often unclear, however, and other linguists have suggested that count-classifiers and mass-classifiers may not be fundamentally different.
Accounts of the semantic relationship may be grouped loosely into categorical theories,which propose that count-classifiers are matched to objects solely on the basis of inherent features of those objects(such as length or size), and prototypical theories, which propose that people learn to match a count-classifier to a specific prototypical object and to other objects that are like that prototype.
Specifically, it has been proposed that count-classifiers might be used to mark new or unfamiliar objects within a discourse, to introduce major characters or items in a story or conversation, or to foreground important information and objects by making them bigger and more salient.
Some common semantic categories into which count-classifiers have been claimed to organize nouns include the categories of shape(long, flat, or round), size(large or small), consistency(soft or hard), animacy(human, animal, or object), and function(tools, vehicles, machines, etc.).
Most words can appear with both count-classifiers and mass-classifiers; for example, pizza can be described as both 一张比萨(yì zhāng bǐsà,"one pizza", literally"one pie of pizza"), using a count-classifier, and as 一块比萨(yí kuài bǐsà,"one piece of pizza"), using a mass-classifier.