A Semantic and Contrasiuve Analysis of Mandarn and English Measure Words

• Main Authors: KUO,YI-CHUN, 郭怡君
• Other Authors: James H-Y Tai
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 1998
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/35011215706344357529

碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 語言學研究所 === 86 === From the point of view of language typology, Mandarin is a classifierer language, while English is not. However, in English there is a set of s words functioning as classifiers in classifier language like Mandarin Chinese. They are measure words like classifiers. The previous studies on Mandarin and English measure words have found that the collocations between nouns and measure words are semantically motivated (Tai and Wang 1990, Tai and Chao 1994, Lehrer 1986). This studys supports their findings by uncovering more semantic principles governing the collocations between nouns and measure words. The contrastive analysis deepens our understanding of the role categorization and quantification play in measure words in a classifier language like Mandarin and a non-classifier language like English. The study has uncovered the semantic principles of both Mandarin and English measure words. The semantic principles uncovered provide valuable information for teaching Mandarin or English as a second language. They also have some theoretical implications for linguistics and cognitive psychology in countability and categorization.