Classifiers and Semantic Type Coercion : Motivating a New Classification of Classifiers

Language, Information and Computation(PACLIC 11),1996, 1-10 Classifiers and Semantic Type Coercion: Motivating a New Classification of Classifiers' Kathleen Ahrens* & Chu-Ren Huang** *National Taiwan University, **Academia Sinica *ahrens@cc.ntu.edu.tw, **hschuren@ccvax.sinica.edu.tw Abstract This paper argues that the traditional view that nouns refer only to classic individuals is inadequate. Instead, we argue that nouns are coerced by different types of classifiers to refer to kinds and events as well as to individuals. This finding is important because 1) the semantics of nouns involves more than just individuals, and 2) it is the first time that the previously abstract semantic distinctions between kinds, individuals and events is found to be instantiated in a particular system of a natural language grammar, namely, the classifier system. 1. Introduction There have been two views of categorizing measure words in Mandarin Chinese. The traditional view does not differentiate measure words from classifiers. For example, Chao (1968:584-620) refers to classifiers as individual measures, and subsumes them under the rubric of "measure words". Li and Thompson (1981:106) state that "any measure word can be a classifier." More recently Tai (1990) has pointed out that there is an important distinction between the two notions in that classifiers can only classify over a limited and specific group of nouns, while measure words can be used as a measure for a wide variety of nouns. His definition is as follows: 'A classifier categorizes a class of nouns by picking out some salient perceptual properties, whether physically or functionally based, which are permanently associated with the entities named by the class of nouns; a measure word does not categorize but denotes the quantity of the entity named by a noun.' Underlying the concept that a classifier categorizes a class of nouns based on permanent perceptual properties is the idea that the basic semantic function of nouns is to refer to classic individuals. In what follows we will show that it is inadequate to only allow nouns to refer to classic individuals, and that instead nouns can be coerced by different types of classifiers to refer to kinds and events as well as to individuals. This finding is important not only for its emphasis in understanding the semantics of nouns to be more than just having to do with individuals, but also because it is the first time that the previously abstract semantic distinctions between kinds, individuals and events has been found to be instantiated in a particular system of a natural language grammar, namely, the classifier system. 2. The Kind Reading The kind reading of Mandarin bare NPs is one of the most difficult to account for among a wide range of possible semantic interpretations (I a). Although the kind reading is previously thought to be one of the generic 1 reading typical of bare nominals (Carlson 1977, Chierchia 1982), it does occur with a subset of classifiers in Mandarin (lb, from Huang (1989)). 2 (1)a. you bi� mao da dog compare cat big `Dogs are bigger than cats. [preferred reading]' OR 'This dog …

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