Full Description
Focusing mainly on classifiers, Numeral Classifiers and Classifier Languages offers a deep investigation of three major classifier languages: Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. This book provides detailed discussions well supported by empirical evidence and corpus analyses. Theoretical hypotheses regarding differences and commonalities between numeral classifier languages and other mainly article languages are tested to seek universals or typological characteristics. The essays collected here from leading scholars in different fields promise to be greatly significant in the field of linguistics for several reasons. First, it targets three representative classifier languages in Asia. It also provides critical clues and suggests solutions to syntactic, semantic, psychological, and philosophical issues about classifier constructions. Finally, it addresses ensuing debates that may arise in the field of linguistics in general and neighboring inter-disciplinary areas. This book should be of great interest to advanced students and scholars of East Asian languages.
Contents
Chapter I: Numeral Classifiers and Diversity of Classifier Systems
Chapter II: Taxonomy of Numeral Classifiers:
A Formal Semantic Proposal
Chapter III: Japanese Semantics and the Mass/Count DistinctionChapter IV: A Continuum-Based Approach to the Count-Mass Distinction in Korean
Chapter V: Anti-Generic (Existential) and Distributive Nature of NumCL-Marking
Chapter VI: Classifiers, Articles, and Bare Nominals
Chapter VII: Japanese Numeral Quantifiers that Count Events
Chapter VIII: How Classifiers Affect the Mental Representation of Entities
Chapter IX: Descriptive Function of Numeral Classifiers: A Corpus Based Analysis of Numeral Classifiers in Korean
