Classifier (linguistics)

A classifier (abbreviated or ) 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 Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese. Classifiers are absent or marginal in European languages. An example of a possible classifier in English 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, genders) 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. 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.

About this result

This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Related concepts (53)

Related lectures (3)

Classifier (linguistics)

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, etc. A mass noun has none of these properties: It cannot be modified by a number, cannot occur in plural, and cannot co-occur with quantificational determiners. Below are examples of all the properties of count nouns holding for the count noun chair, but not for the mass noun furniture.

Agreement (linguistics)

In linguistics, agreement or concord (abbreviated ) occurs when a word changes form depending on the other words to which it relates. It is an instance of inflection, and usually involves making the value of some (such as gender or person) "agree" between varied words or parts of the sentence. For example, in Standard English, one may say I am or he is, but not "I is" or "he am". This is because English grammar requires that the verb and its subject agree in person.

Error correction: repetition code CS-308: Introduction to quantum computation

Covers repetition codes for error correction and the importance of achieving a unitary map.

Nonlinear Dynamics: Chaos and Complex Systems PHYS-460: Nonlinear dynamics, chaos and complex systems

Explores countable and uncountable sets, Cantor set, Mandelbrot set, and Box dimension in nonlinear dynamics and complex systems.

Music Semantics: Problems and Prospects

Explores music semantics, discussing inferences triggered by different musical elements and proposing a framework for understanding music's meaning.