4. Analysis
4.1 Data Analysis in Languages
4.1.1 Mandarin Chinese
國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
analysis will be displayed in Section 4.2. In Section 4.3, a syntactic analysis will be proposed to explain the typological property of classifiers and plurals in the majority of languages as well as some exceptions with co-occurrence of classifiers and plurals.
In Section 4.4, some possible explanations for our findings are presented.
4.1 Data Analysis in Languages
In this paper, 22 languages are investigated. Mandarin Chinese and Japanese will be closely examined in Section 4.1.1 and Section 4.1.2, respectively. In section 4.1.3, languages in which classifiers are obligatory according to Gil (2008) (Taba, Kathmandu Newar, Belhare, Mokilese, Kham, Nivkh, Garo, Vietnamese, Ulithian, Jacaltec, and Teribe) will be examined. In section 4.1.4, languages in which classifiers are optional according to Gil (2008) (Hatam, Tuvaluan, Hungarian, Turkish, Ainu, Khmer, Indonesian, Tetun, and Chantyal) will be analyzed. Most of the data are secondary sources collected from previous studies.
4.1.1 Mandarin Chinese
Chinese is considered to be a prototypical classifier language, and its classifiers are obligatory, including general classifiers, human classifiers, animal classifiers, inanimate classifiers and shape classifiers.
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(33) Range of application of classifiers a. Measure word: jin
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
e. Shape classifier: ke 一 顆 蘋果 yi ke pingguo one CL apple
‘an apple’
Since classifier system in Chinese is quite complete, it is worth examining the range of the application of the plural marker -men. Some linguists considered it as collectives (Lu Shuxiang 1947, Chao 1968, Norman 1988, Iljic 1994, Cheng and Sybesma 1999) rather than plurals (Li and Thompson 1981, Li 1999, Huang 2005, Her 2012a). In this paper, we find that -men is a plural.
Some linguists propose that Zhang San men ‘many Zhang San or Zhang San and his friends’ have a plural reading with the meaning that there are many people whose
name is Zhang San and a collective reading with the meaning of Zhang San and his friends. But Zhang San men with a collective reading is seldom used. Most native speakers even regard the collective usage as ungrammatical. It is more likely that Zhang San ta men will be used to obtain the collective meaning of Zhang San and his friends.
In the other case, if there are a man who is tall, and three men who are short, we can not use gao ge zi men ‘tall people’ to denote the four people. But if –men is a collective, gao ge zi men should be applicable in this situation. So –men is not a collective marker.
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
Another piece of evidence is proposed by Huang (2005). -men can be followed by a distributive marker dou ‘all’, such as, tamen dou jie hun le ‘They are all married.’
With the use of distributive marker dou, the meaning is that each of the two people is married to another people. However, if –men is a collective marker, the sentence means that the two people are married to each other. While there is no such interpretation for this sentence. Thus -men can not be a collective but a plural marker.
Although –men is a plural marker, its properties as following are different from the plural marker -s in English.
(34) a. -men applies only on pronoun, proper name, human or animated common nouns.
b. -men is not used with numerals.
c. -men is not obligatory.
In this paper, we suggest that the first and second properties should be revised.
Among the younger generation, -men can be affixed not only to pronouns, proper names, human or animated common nouns, but also to inanimate common nouns.
(35) a. 去 把 桌子們 擦 一 擦 qu ba zhuozimen ca yi ca go table-PL wipe
‘Wipe the tables’
b. 把 插頭們 拔 掉 ba chatoumen ba diao plug PL pull
‘Pull out the plugs.’
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
In addition, when -men is affixed to inanimate nouns, the usage of -men is more like a plural marker rather than a collective.
On the second point, -men can co-occur with numerals along with classifiers as in (36).
(36) a. 三 個 老師們 昨天 去 開會 San ge laoshimen zuotian qu kaihui three CL teacher PL yesterday go meeting
‘Three teachers had a meeting yesterday.’
b. 那 五 個 學生們 的 作業 交 了 沒?
Na wu ge xueshengmen de zuoye jiao le mei?
That five CL student PL homework hand in?
‘Did the five students hand in their homework?’
Thus, we can find that the application of -men is more prevalent than as noted in previous studies.
We can sum up that in Chinese, classifiers are stronger than plurals in previous studies. But we find that plurals have become stronger in recent years, with the extension of range of application to include inanimate nouns.
4.1.2 Japanese
Classifiers in Japanese are obligatory and include measure words, general classifiers, human classifiers, animate classifiers, inanimate classifiers and shape classifiers.
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(38) Range of application of classifiers a. Measure word: hakoe. Shape classifier: satsu hon ichi-satsu
book one CL
‘a book’ (Dowing 1996: 55)
As for number marking, nouns in Japanese are transnumerals, so number marking is not obligatory. There is more than one plural marker in Japanese, such as -tati, -ra, -domo, and -gata. -ra, -domo, and -gata are only used to denote plural pronouns, but -tati can be widely used in human and animate common nouns.
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(39) Range of application of plurals a. Human
Some linguists have treated -tati as a plural while others have considered it as a collective. -tati can be either a plural or a collective when attached to different kinds of nouns. If the noun is a common noun, -tati represents a plural. If the noun is a
As for the co-occurrence of classifiers and plurals, it is grammatical in Japanese as in (41).
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
(41) gakusei-tati san-nin student-PL 3-CL
‘three students’ (Ishii 2000: 12)
Thus the system of Japanese is quite similar to Chinese. The classifier system is more dominant than the plural system.