Talk:Chinese classifier

Article improvements

I just finished doing a near-total rewrite of the prose portion of this article, and am considering taking it to GAN soon. First, though, there are some things on my mind, and I'm welcoming comment...

• Examples section: is it necessary? It seems nice, but maybe rather than including a whole section we could just take one or two examples and merge them into the intro.
• List of classifiers: obviously, this is a big part of the article. It's also a concern...most of it is unsourced, which doesn't make it wrong, it just makes it hard to deal with; it also could invite quibbling over what to include. At the same time, I don't think it would be a good idea at all to remove it; I know some people, especially non-Chinese-speakers, who have used this list as a resource for their first foray into classifiers. (Granted, the external links section has links to similar lists, which I think are actually better than ours, but still, most people go to Wikipedia first and ignore those links, don't ask me why.) One thing that could help would be to base it off of some of the big classifier dictionaries, such as Hanyu Liangci Cidian (1988) and Xiandai Hanyu Liangci Yanjiu (2001), and require footnotes for items added that aren't in those.
• Use of traditional characters: in the versions of this article before I came, the text used both traditional and simplified. When I rewrote it, I used only simplified, simply because I don't have traditional character input installed on my computer; I was originally going to ask someone else to fill in behind me, but then I got to a point where I had rewritten the entire text portion anyway so "consistency" is no longer an issue (right now the article is, almost, consistently in all-simplified). So the question is whether it would be worthwhile to add back in traditional characters. On the downside, it greatly increases the feeling of clutter within the text; on the plus side, we avoid accusations of bias and whatnot, and might be more accessible. My intuition is to give both traditional and simplified when introducing a particular classifier, as a word; and to use only simplified when giving full sentences or phrases.
• I have tried to refrain from using jargon in the classifier vs. massifier and "relationship to noun" sections, but I might still need to do some more work making it accessible to lay readers. If anyone wants to read through those sections, please let me know if any parts were unclear.

Anyone please feel free to offer input or comments. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 20:37, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Regarding Trad/Simp characters, not all differ between the two. For the ones that do (which can be distinguished by checking the Xinhua Zidian for "alternate forms"), Google Translate or http://www.pin1yin1.com can easily fix that if you are unable to input Traditional. (Additionally, in WinXP, Traditional is supported by default if the Asian language pack is installed. It is the default IME in "Chinese (Taiwan)", while in "Chinese (PRC)", it can be activated in Microsoft Pinyin IME 3.0 by checking "Traditional characters" in the Options menu.) Regards, -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email guestbook complaints 01:29, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh, just so you know, these are all included in WinXP, and in the case that they are not, they can be freely downloaded from the Microsoft website. I always have the following activated (while leaving English as default. I don't use all of them, however I frequently switch to Chinese when the time arises)

• Microsoft New Phonetic IME 2002a
• Microsoft Pinyin IME 3.0
• Microsoft IME Standard 2002 ver 8.1 (JP)
  • (or Microsoft Natural Input 2002 ver. 8.1) (JP)
  • (or Drawing Pad/Writing Pad) (JP)
• Korean Input System (IME 2002)
• Cyrillic (Russian)
• English (Australia)

New Phonetic is the default Taiwan IME, its really difficult to use and it is rather irritating. You can choose between bopomofo, Hanyu Pinyin and Tongyong Pinyin input. MS Pinyin IME is what I typically use. It is the PRC version, and only supports Simplified by default, although you can type Traditional if you change the GB code in "Options". You can also draw Kanji using the Japanese Drawing Pad IME with the mouse. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email guestbook complaints 01:40, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I see. I used to have traditional characters (came up in the list as "Chinese (Taiwan)") but never used them, and I only know how to type in pinyin (I think it was set to new phonetic or bopomofo, which is why I couldn't get it to work) and uninstalled it. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 01:49, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

There is a how-to FAQ at [1] - it has many different pages for WinXP and Vista support for Simplified and Traditional Characters. You mind find this page helpful. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email guestbook complaints 08:24, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Article improvements - comments

I have been asked to comment on this article, I guess in preparation for the GA nomination. I like the way it's written, and all I can say, really, is to congratulate the author(s) on work well done. If the current author is interested in more expansions, here are a few that a curious reader may suggest:

• Historical situation. As the measure word article mentions, the (mandatory or near-mandatory) use of measure words is an areal feature, characteristic of modern Chinese language in all varieties and most of its southern, but nor northern neighbors; it also mentions that the classifiers were not common in Classical Chinese. Is there published research on how this feature either developed within Chinese, or spread between languages? It probably could be quite a fascinating topic, just as the development of articles in Germanic or Romance languages would be.
  • I've added a brief section. This stuff is somewhat difficult to find; the Morev article (which is actually more about Tai languages than Chinese) cites about 3 sources, but I can't get my hands on any of them yet, I've put in some requests with inter-library loan and will see if they come through". rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 23:24, 18 May 2009 (UTC)
• Can one modify "massifiers" by adjectives, e.g. by saying something like 一大杯咖啡 for "a big cup of coffee"?
  • Yes; I mentioned that a bit with the 一大群人 example, but only in passing (a single sentence at the end of the classifier vs. massifier section). The Cheng & Sybesma article has much, much more on this, if you think it's worth adding (in general, though, I've been trying to avoid getting too technical and detailed, for the sake of normal readers). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 23:24, 18 May 2009 (UTC)
• To which extent are classifiers needed in ordinal construction, such as 第一[个(?)]人?
  • I believe they're mandatory, just as in normal number constructions. I'm not a native speaker so my "intuition" is not the best, but I'm pretty sure that's how it is. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 23:24, 18 May 2009 (UTC)
• You don't need classifiers in constructions such as 三千马 or 五万人, do you?
  • As far as I know, you still do. The only time I hear those numbers "without" classifiers is with 'measurement units' like 天 and 元 (or, for example, the line from 大话西游, "一万年！"). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 23:24, 18 May 2009 (UTC)
• Some words don't need classifiers, e.g. some units of time (年,天, but not 星期，月) - I guess because they can themselves be used as measure words?
  • Yep, it's something like that. As far as I know, the fact that 年 and 天 don't take classifiers but 星期 and 月 do is an arbitrary historical accident. (I have a source somewhere that says something to that effect, but I don't remember which one off the top of my head). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 23:24, 18 May 2009 (UTC)
• Maybe expand even more the section on "Variation", trying to explain how speakers choose e.g. between 位, 名, or simple 个 when counting people, or between 条 and 只 when talking about dogs... This is discussed, in a sense under individual words, but maybe a general discussion would be useful.

• This is already discussed to some extent in measure word, but we can just as well mention existing parallels in English: "5 grain of rice" or "3 blades of grass" (vs. "5 peas" or "3 flowers"), or "a copy (of a book/newspaper)".

Again, thanks for great work. Vmenkov (talk) 12:07, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Great work. A couple of suggestions/thoughts:

• since you mention the similarity of systems of closely related or geographically related languages, perhaps a few examples?
• Regarding the lack of classifiers on oracle bones; I have to admit hazy knowledge of that period of writing but if I remember rightly, the set of characters was rather restricted. Did characters exist at that stage that could have served as such? And, is there any evidence that the writing may have not fully reflected the language as it would have been spoken?
• Merger of classifiers does not only affect 個; my mother never uses 匹 for horses, only for bolts of cloth, for horses 隻. I realise that's not a source but you may have one? Akerbeltz (talk) 19:49, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment. Regarding the first point, unfortunately I don't know any Tai or Austronesian languages or any of the other ones described there; I just have those sources saying that the systems are similar, and I took it more or less at face value (I have very little background in historical linguistics and typology, so this section of the article was the most difficult for me to write). Wang's dissertation might have more; I haven't read all of it closely, but much of it is devoted to why she thinks Chinese had a classifier system before the Tai languages did, so I imagine she also spends some time describing the Tai system.

About the oracle bones... I too know little about this, but I think it's pretty widely accepted in Chinese linguistics that the writing system always lagged several centuries (at least) behind actual speaking. I wouldn't be surprised if things like classifiers were appearing in speech long before they are attested in writing, but unfortunately there's no good record of how language was spoken back then; the only stuff that has been preserved is more formal writing.

The thing about 匹 is interesting...is bolts of cloth also a standard thing that this classifier is used for, or do you think your mom is using it in a non-standard way (ie, in a dialect that's slightly different than Standard Mandarin)? It sounds to me like this is similar to what happens with 個 (and 隻 is also a very general, "overused" classifier like 個, I believe especially in Taiwan), but I have no explanation for the use of 匹 with bolts of cloth unless that's just a regular part of the dialect. Using 隻 for horse is not surprising, I think; to me at least, 匹 sounds very formal. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 20:09, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Agreed on the oracle bones. I just thought there's an offchance historical linguistics may have spotted something. I'll have a look if I have anything in my library on Tai/Austronesian.

Well, the dictionaries list 匹 as applying to bolts of cloth and horses so it's not an unusual usage. I personally think that the move from 匹 to 隻 is due to HK being rather thin on horses so it probably got squeezed out to lack of usage, whereas bolts of cloth are fairly ubiquitous. Akerbeltz (talk) 20:24, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Tasks

(both for my own reference and for anyone else who is watching)

• Rewrite intro, per WP:LEDE, so it summarizes the article. It should also, though, retain the very basic stuff about what classifiers are and when they are used (currently the 2nd para), which doesn't need to have its own section in the article since it's pretty simple. For most average readers, though—even people who have been students of Chinese for years—I imagine that is as much as they know about classifiers and is the main thing they're looking for when they come to this article (in addition to the list, of course)...let's just hope they also read on and learn about all the nitty gritty as well.
• Decide what to do, if anything, about the list of classifiers. (One option is always to spin it out...although that kind of feels like cheating.) decided to split it out, this article was getting quite big.
• Review the list to make sure things are put into the right sections. will deal with that over there.
• Gen copyedit.

rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 00:20, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

If I may add one - replace the underline of Chinese characters for emphasis with bold or colour, otherwise non-readers of characters may think the underline is part of the character. Akerbeltz (talk) 21:51, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

I did worry about that, but on the other hand I think bolding them is also sometimes discouraged because it can obscure the characters. Or maybe italicizing is more discouraged than bolding. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 21:54, 4 July 2009 (UTC) Ah, found it: Wikipedia:Chinese#Characters. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 22:00, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

I suppose if it's just individual characters, rather than whole strings of text, the bolding might not be so hard to read....then again, it's also the individual characters that we want to be easiest to read, since those are the subject of the article. One solution might be to bold classifiers when they appear in example sentences/phrases, and leave them unbolded when they appear by themselves (I guess that's what is done with the underlining right now). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 22:16, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

I take your point, how about just changing the color then? Or set a background color? Akerbeltz (talk) 22:23, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

I was just about to suggest color as another alternative. I tried bold, here is what it looks like; I don't think I like it, it makes the article look very dark and 'busy'. Color might work, but it would have a similar problem, making the article look a bit crazy; also there are accessibility problems (in the case of colorblind readers, readers with strange background colors set, people reading from a kindle or whatever instead of a normal computer, etc.). I guess we have to ascertain how much of a problem the underlining really is. Personally, I think the underline doesn't usually look like part of the main character since it's below the main line of text...but I'm speaking as someone who already knows how to read Chinese, so that might not be so obvious to someone who doesn't read Chinese. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 22:26, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Another thought: I'm reading Wang's dissertation right now (to get some more info on 个) and she uses underlining, rather than bolding; as far as I remember, most other articles I've read also do that. Of course, that doesn't mean we have to copy them (first of all we're not paper, so we have color options that they didn't have...plus, we're writing for a general audience, whereas they are writing for an expert audience), but it's just a thought. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 03:19, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

I showed underlined characters in a printout to some friends who were over for coffee and asked them to copy the chracters, 3 of the 4 (all non-readers) copied the underline. Even when told, they found it hard to tell the difference. Remember most people can't even tell which way up! I had a half hour discussion with a German museum curator once because they had mirrored a chinese letter and he was trying to explain to me that you can read chinese either way... Akerbeltz (talk) 08:32, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Hahaha, oh boy. That reminds me of this post a few weeks ago by Victor Mair (link seems to be dead today, here is a mirror of it).

I don't have much time just now, but later today I'll try doing them in green or something and see how it looks. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 13:42, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Unfinished discussion from FAC

copied over from Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Chinese classifier/archive1

Types:

While you say 书本 has a "plural" sense, your examples both involve "all". Is it perhaps exhaustive rather than simply plural? Chinese obviously doesn't normally use number: what makes these constructions different?

Since some of the most salient mass classifiers in English are "loaf/slice/piece of bread/cheese", etc., it might be instructive to give a Chinese equivalent.

I'm a little concerned that so much attention is given to mass-CL, which are not of much interest to an English speaker, compared to the amount of time on count-CL. Also, the section on verbal CL could be and maybe should be expanded.

What kind of "event" does 場 count? I assume that it's extremely general, like 个 for nouns. Are there also more narrowly applicable verbal classifiers, or is Chinese rather semantically impoverished in this area? (E.g., are there different ways of counting human activities that might actually take place in an arena, as opposed to weather or calendrical events? Would 場 be used for "2 solar eclipses"? Is it the only CL that could be so used?) If spoken Chinese uses two dozen noun classifiers, how many verbal classifiers does it use? And come to think of it, how many of those two dozen are count-CL? An English speaker wouldn't think twice of learning the Chinese for a "cup" of tea or "slice" of pie, but would consider 只, 头, etc. to be a challenge, and it would be considerate to be explicit about the extent of the challenge.

I haven't read the rest of the article, but do you cover how much semantic play is involved? For example, in medieval Japan, the 'wing' classifier for birds was also used for rabbits, though I don't know how seriously. (People will laugh at this today.) The supposed motivation was that their ears resembled wings, but some suspect that it may have been a way to justify violating Buddhist proscriptions against eating meat. kwami (talk) 07:30, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

• About 书本...I think you're right. I don't know much about the formal differences between plural and exhaustive, but AFAIK these forms are closer to exhaustive—it doesn't necessarily describe every item in the set, but describes them all in a general fashion (for example, 书本很多 would literally mean "the books are very many", ie 'there are a lot of books'—on the shelf, or whatever...slightly awkward example, I think 车辆 'the cars' is more common). I could modify that sentence to say "to convey a plural or exhaustive sense); I just can't find anything on WP to link "exhaustive" to.

"Exhaustive" isn't a linguistic term. I would just describe the sense rather than trying to find a (probably unhelpful) label for it.

Actually, now that I think about it, I think "all" is not necessary in the translations, so trying to describe the sense as exhaustive is probably unnecessarily confusing and perhaps not accurate anyway. Li & Thompson call it "plural or collective", which I think is the safest and probably the most accurate description. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 01:49, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

• About loaves of bread/slices of cheese...I'll do some brainstorming and then add one. Interestingly, the best examples (the ones you named) are precisely the foods most people in China don't eat ;). Perhaps the best example is "pizza": 一张比萨 one-CL-pizza has a count-classifier and refers to a whole pizza, whereas 一块比萨 one piece pizza has a mass-classifier and refers to a single piece of pizza. It doesn't sound too awkward in Chinese, and it's still a phrase that all readers can recognized.

Yes, that occurred to be when I wrote it! The pizza example would be good. "Bread" is an odd word this way (where you need a measure word for the basic unit), and I can't think of another example like it. I know: for pizza you could give the literal translation "one pie of pizza" (or "one pizza pie") as well as the idiomatic "one pizza".

Added the pizza example. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 01:49, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

• As for attention to mass-CL...actually, my concern has always been the opposite. Beyond the "types" section, the article focuses almost entirely on count-classifiers to the exclusion of mass-classifiers; there simply has not been much research on mass-classifiers, since count-classifiers are more interesting (especially back when people still believed studying count-classifiers was going to give us insight into how categorization works in the human brain...although that has not really been the case). For example, the "relation to nouns" section, where prototype theory and neutralization and usage variation is discussed, is pretty much all about count-classifiers (since mass-classifiers can be used with pretty much anything, there's nothing interesting to say about 'which nouns they pattern with'); same goes for the "purpose" section, since mass-classifiers are nearly universal cross-linguistically, whereas count-classifiers are somewhat special.

Okay. I just haven't read enough of the article.

• As for verbal classifiers....it's pretty much the same issue, there's not much written on them. Li & Thompson don't even acknowledge them as their own category (they essentially give them two sentences, and describe them as "another type of measure word is one that denotes an instance of occurrence of an event"), and most papers on classifiers tend to have a footnote somewhere near the beginning basically saying "there are some verbal classifiers out there, but I'm only gonna talk about nominal classifiers here"...for example, Zhang 2007 has "Chinese classifiers are not limited to nominal ones (mingliang ci) but also include verb classifiers (dongliangci), measurement units (danwei liangci), and so on. In this study, I am only concerned with nominal classifiers." Personally, I'm not even really convinced yet that verbal classifiers deserve their own category, because they seem similar to nominal classifiers to me; for example, one of Li & Thompson's six examples is 那场火没人死 (that-CL-fire not.have people die "Nobody died in the fire")—seems to me like it's just another nominal classifier, where the classified noun happens to be an event. The only verbal classifiers that I'm really confident about are all the ones that roughly mean "times" (次 ci, 遍 bian, 回 hui, etc.), which is also the only example I included in the section; those are the only ones that seem clearly "verbal" to me.

Yes, I was a bit dubious about the distinction myself. I wonder if we could make this more overt?

• As for your question on 場, it is basically just a classifier for events in general (perhaps I should say that instead of "general classifier for events", to avoid sounding like I'm comparing it to the super-special 个/個). For example, Li & Thompson's examples are 那场球很紧 (that CL ballgame was very tense), 张那场火没人死 (no one died in that CL fire), and 昨天有一场电影 (yesterday there was a CL movie); I could include these examples in the article if you think it would help.

As you said, it seems 球, 火, and 电影 are just nouns, that 'event' nouns take a separate classifier than long thin nouns or small animal nouns, not that they're verbal. I can't see creating a special subsection for them. The "times" counters, okay. That would seem to be a distinct category.

• Questions about other verbal classifiers.... well, I believe there are pretty specific and pretty general verbal classifiers, like there are for nouns. For example, the ones I listed above (次、遍、回) all roughly mean "times" and can be used pretty generally ("I did X however-many times"), but there is also 躺 specifically for trips/journeys, so you can say "I went to Beijing one 次" or "I went to Beijing one 趟"; the meanings sound a tiny bit different to me but not in any way that's translatable. (Also, with ones like 躺 there is the same problem I mentioned above, that I'm not totally convinced it's a verbal classifier, rather than just being the nominal classifier for trips/journeys.)

Worth mentioning.

• As for the number of verbal classifiers, I have not yet found any data on this (probably because not until fairly recently did anyone bother trying to consider them as anything separate from nominal classifiers, and even then the boundary between 'verbal' and 'nominal' classifier is very unclear). I also have been unable to get my hands on any of the Chinese-language "classifier dictionaries" that are mentioned in the article. My impression is that the system of verbal classifiers, while not necessarily "impoverished", is certainly much smaller than that for nominal classifiers; while they're similar in that both systems have a small subset of classifiers that do 99% of the work in real-life, for nominal classifiers there are hundreds of extra/rare classifiers beyond that core set, whereas for verbal classifiers there seem to be very few. Likewise, while the so-called "core" set of nominal classifiers consists of over 20 common classifiers, anything that could be called a "core" set of verbal classifiers would probably be more like 5.

Worth mentioning too.

• About semantic play.... the "Purpose" and "Variation in usage" sections both briefly mention ways in which classifiers can be used for stylistic purposes, etc. I don't know of any specific examples as interesting as the birds/rabbits one you mention in Japanese, but there is definitely a good deal of similar stylistic use in Chinese (especially if you listen to enough pop music...). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 18:43, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Haven't gotten to those sections yet. That's what I find interesting. kwami (talk) 23:46, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Late reply

After finally getting a hold of the He book I was trying to find, I was able to find some more stuff to cite against the division of "verbal" and "nominal" classifiers, and in this edit I removed the "verbal" section and turned the stuff about verbal classifiers into a side note in the intro to the bigger section. I think this should address some of the issues you raised above, including the dubious nature of the distinction, the general-ness of 場, and the number of verbal classifiers (still haven't found statistics, just a citation asserting that the vast majority of classifiers are nominal). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 01:53, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Comments regarding the lead (in preparation for future FAC)

• the words "such as" are used 8 times (38 in the whole article)
• "for example" is used 4 times
• the second and third paragraphs of the lead don't have many links. Maybe link:

"a few dozen to several hundred distinct classifiers" to the relevant list

"different dialects" to the relevant article/list

"languages close to Chinese" to the relevant article or list

"Chinese grammar"

similar classifier systems

Chinese system

• isn't 'full' in "full nouns" useless or redundant?
• maybe prosify "this"/"that" (remove /)
• "meaning they do not have any meaning" the two 'meaning' close together is not very nice
• "Each noun is associated with particular classifiers." Is that true? Are there not nouns with only 'ge' associated to?
• "many flat objects" is 'many' really necessary?
• "long and thin things" : 'things' is not very encyclopaedic
• "The manner in which speakers choose which classifiers to use with which nouns" maybe simplify to "The way speakers choose classifiers", "to use with which nouns" seems redundant
• "(for example, all "long" nouns take a certain classifier)" this has already been noted before. Maybe write something like '(as for the "long" objects above)'
• the use of quotation marks in the second paragraph ("long" nouns, "prototypical" pairings, "correct" classifier, "general classifier", "mass-classifier") reads a bit non encyclopaedic.
• "anything in a box, such as cigarettes or books" I didn't know books where in a box!
• "In all, Chinese has anywhere from a few dozen to several hundred distinct classifiers" is 'in all' really necessary?
• "with speakers of different dialects often using different classifiers to count the same item" The usage of classifier isn't limited to 'counting' items.
• The penultimate sentence of the second paragraph is a bit long. Maybe replace semicolon with a full stop.
• "although classifiers themselves did not appear in these phrases until much late" does 'these phrases' refer to 'Classifier-like phrases'? (supposedly the latter doesn't contain classifiers)

Maybe more to come, GeometryGirl (talk) 00:10, 2 August 2009 (UTC) .

Thanks for the comments; I'll try to take a closer look at these issues and respond soon (this weekend I'm moving so I don't have much time). I finally got access to a new book, which I will be able to pick up from the library tomorrow, and once I have my hands on that I will be doing some more content editing as well. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 03:05, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Quick responses:

• "such as" and "for example": I think this is pretty much unavoidable when trying to walk the line between content that is accessible for lay readers and content that is useful for more knowledgeable readers. These phrases are mostly using when defining or giving examples of a piece of jargon or a difficult concept; for example, if I just said "a content word" without adding 'such as a noun', that statement would be fine for anyone who's taken a linguistic class or two, but would fly over the heads of all lay readers (and that's only in the very first sentence of the article!). It might make the style feel a bit bumpy, but I think it's necessary for making the content comprehensible, and I can't think of any better ways to word it.
• links I linked "different dialects" to Varieties of Chinese, and linked Chinese grammar; I don't think the others are viable, though. For "a few dozen to several hundred distinct classifiers", linking the term just doesn't stylistically seem to fit into the sentence for me (although if others agree it should be linked, it wouldn't be the end of the world). For "languages close to Chinese", there is no single article to link to; this is referring to languages such as Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, and Japanese, all of which are in different language families. There is the same problem with "similar classifier systems", there is no one article to link to (Japanese counter word and Korean counter word are both linked in the see also section, but most of the other languages don't seem to have separate articles for their classifiers; there is Vietnamese syntax#Classifier position, at least). For "Chinese system", any link given would be circular; this is the article about the Chinese classifier system.
• I wrote "full noun" to stress that these were semantically meaningful nouns, as opposed to words that have the grammatical behavior of nouns but have been semantically bleached. If there is any better way to word this I'd be open to suggestions.
• "Each noun is associated with particular classifiers": this wording was the subject of a long discussion between me and kwami at the recent FAC. Basically, we're trying to express what every first-year student knows but is hard to cram into one sentence: that when you have a given noun, there is some classifier you're supposed to use it with (at least in simplistic, textbook grammar) and others that you shouldn't use it with. Anyway, if the current wording is a problem, it could be changed to "most nouns are associated with one or two particular classifiers".
• "many flat objects: I believe many or some other qualifier is definitely necessary, as it is not the case that all flat objects take the classifier zhang. One thing that's clear about classifier systems is that languages are very selective in how they choose what a noun's main feature is; take roads, for example, one language might classify them as "flat" things and another might classify them as "long" things. In Chinese, roads are flat things but never take the classifier zhang (except perhaps in some special stylistic usage--but the whole thing that makes that stylistic is that you're using a classifier you normally would not use), they are instead classified with tiao, the classifier for long things; likewise, ground or land might be considered flat, but takes other classifiers, such as kuai(r) (for chunks or pieces of things). So, the general point is, not all flat things use the classifier zhang—the language is very selective in choosing which flat things will be considered "flat" for classifier purposes—and thus "many" is necessary in this sentence.
• "(for example, all "long" nouns take a certain classifier)": Actually, that bit is trying to make a slightly different point than the one above it; it's a classical/categorical explanation for why the "long" nouns mentioned above happen to use the same classifier (the claim here is that they take the same classifier because their long-ness determines which classifier to use...as opposed to the claim of prototype theory, which would say that "long" nouns use the same classifier because they're similar to some prototype noun that uses it). I have tried to clarify it with this edit; hopefully that will make the parenthetical remark seem less redundant.
• I didn't know books were in a box!: They can be :) (for example, if you're moving?) rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 03:48, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
• In all, Chinese has ... classifiers: I think "In all" is necessary...given that this statement comes right after a long discussion of a bunch of different kinds of classifiers, it makes sense to clarify here that this is an attempt to count all of them.

Good luck with your move. The changes you have made already make a difference. Here is a continuation of lead issues:

• Concerning the 'such as', some are unnecessary (I've taken the first three occurrences and given alternate formulations):

"always used in conjunction with a content word such as a noun" -> 'always used in conjunction with a noun or another content word'

"classifier phrases may be guided less by grammar and more by stylistic or pragmatic concerns on the part of a speaker, such as trying to foreground new or important information" replace 'such as' by 'who may be'

"classifiers may be used in variant ways (such as appearing after the noun rather than before it, or being repeated)" -> replace 'such as' by 'including'

• "Furthermore, in addition" that's a big awkward and unnecessary
• I quite like "most nouns are associated with one or two particular classifiers"
• "In the modern Chinese languages, words known as classifiers or measure words" wouldn't it be more precise to replace 'words' by 'characters'?
• "the choice to use a number or demonstrative at all, however, is up to the speaker" Chinese is not only a spoken language! (BTW, 'speaker' is used 5 times in the lead, some of which should probably be replaced)
• "many flat objects" I get your point, maybe use 'some' which is more neutral
• "whereas long and thin objects use 条 tiáo" here the wording seems to imply that *all* long and thin objects use tiao
• "the mass-classifier 盒 (hé, "box") may be used with anything in a box" same comment as above
• "Use of classifiers did not become" maybe add 'The' before 'use'
• "longness" is not a word (used twice in the article)
• "how groups of nouns are categorized" is it the groups of nouns that are categorized or the nouns themselves?
• "Each noun is associated with one or more particular classifiers. For example, many flat objects such as tables, papers, beds, and benches use the classifier 张 (張) zhāng, whereas long and thin objects use 条 tiáo." The second sentence does not give examples of the fact described in the first. It seems the examples relate more to mass-classifiers.
• "the mass-classifier 盒 (hé, "box") may be used with anything in a box" maybe replace 'anything in a box' by 'boxed items'. Can we use 'he' for presents that come in a box?

Maybe more later. 86.210.201.141 (talk) 15:11, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

replies

• Your changes to "such as" look good, thanks.

• I will implement the changes then, and maybe others.

• "words known as classifiers or measure words" – actually, it would not be appropriate to replace "word" with "character"; there is a bit of a 'one character = one word' myth in Chinese, but they are not really the same thing. Characters are just a means for writing syllables, just as alphabetic letters are a means for writing sounds, and they do not always correspond to words in modern Chinese; all classifiers really are words, not just characters, and in fact some [albeit rare] classifiers are composed of more than one character. These include measurement units like 英里、公斤、etc., and monosyllabic classifiers as pronounced in dialects with erhua, such as 块儿).

• OK, thanks for the explanations.

• "speaker" – in linguistics and discussions of languages, "speaker" is generally used as a catch-all to refer to both people speaking and writing the language. (For example, someone who is called a "native speaker" of a language is assumed to both speak and write it, assuming that there is widespread literacy in that language.)

• OK, thanks for the explanations.

• "Each noun is associated with one or more particular classifiers. For example, many flat objects such as tables, papers, beds, and benches use the classifier 张 (張) zhāng, whereas long and thin objects use 条 tiáo." – I'm not sure how these examples don't illustrate the first sentence, but perhaps something I wrote is unclear. Would it be better if I replace the general examples with specific ones? (Something like "for example, the word "table" usually takes the classifier 张, whereas the word "road' usually takes 条") rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 16:30, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

• Sorry, my point was that the example was more "for every classifier specific nouns are attached" rather than "for every nouns specific classifiers are attached"

• I see. That's a bit of a controversial point (kwami and I had a long discussion about it on the FAC page), but I think it's more feasible that a noun has a specific classifier, rather than vice versa... some classifiers are very specific in what nouns they go with (for example, pi is used almost exclusively for horses, and duo for flowers), but many, such as zhang and tiao, go with a huge number of nouns and their use is still expanding as new words come into the language. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 03:43, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

More random comments

• "This is still an open question." The reference is already 10 years old.
  • As far as I know, this is the most recent comprehensive/review paper about this debate. If it's a problem, though, the whole sentence could just be removed, it's not very crucial. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 04:03, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
    • Removed. 92.149.134.23 (talk) 20:40, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
• "For example, books take the classifier 本 běn, flat things take 张 (張) zhāng, animals take 只 (隻) zhī, machines take 台 tái" It seems you are citing rules with no exceptions...
  • Added "generally". rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 01:09, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
• Not all simplified characters have their traditional equivalent (for example, 头). Maybe all characters should be checked consistently.
  • Sorry, I didn't realize there was a traditional character for that (I never officially learned traditional characters, so I just know some here and there); if you see any more that are missing, let me know! rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 04:03, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
• Maybe write a sentence somewhere in the article about the meanings of 量 and 词 to give insight.
  • I added "literal Chinese equivalent" before the word 量词; hopefully that is enough to express the meaning (there's not much to say other than that 量="to measure" and 词="word"). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 01:09, 4 August 2009 (UTC) I also added a link to the wiktionary entry, which decomposes the word into the two characters. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 01:19, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
• "more or less one item" grrrrrr
  • Replaced with "generally only used with one item" rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 01:09, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
• "wǒ qù-guo liǎng cì" why is liang ci in bold? This isn't consistent throughout the article.
  • Removed bold; I think originally this was the only full-sentence example so I put it there to help non-Chinese-speaking readers locate where the actual classifier was, but that was before we were underlining everything. It's not necessary anymore, thanks for the catch. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 01:09, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
• "There may be specific patterns behind which classifier-noun pairs may be "neutralized" to use the general classifier, and which may not." Thanks for responding about this sentence in the FAC. English is not my first language, and I find it very bizarre (if not ungrammatical) and difficult to understand. What does the last 'which' refer to? Could you please rewrite it.
  • It also refers to "which classifier-noun pairs". How about this rewording: Some classifier-noun pairs may be "neutralized" to use the general classifier, and some may not; this variation may be governed by specific patterns. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 04:03, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
• "there is massive variability" 'massive' it not encyclopedic
  • Replaced with "great"; I think there should be at least something, because every language has variability and the point I'm trying to make in this sentence is that this even more variability than usual....but I agree that "massive" is not the right tone. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 01:09, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
• "Even within dialects or within a speaker" 'within a speaker' projects the wrong image in my mind
  • Reworded to "Even within a single dialect or a single speaker". rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 01:09, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
• "Much research on classifier systems in general" 'much research' is vague, 'in general' is uncessary. I recommend you read this regarding redundancy.
  • I think it makes sense to use "in general" here since it's specifically being contrasted, in the very next phrase, with "in particular". As for "much research", I thought the footnote at the end of the paragraph would cover that (it includes some examples of papers that discuss this), although I can try to think of a rewording if necessary. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 04:03, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
• "Mass-classifiers are present in all languages" reference needed
  • The reference is the one at the end of the sentence (Tai 1994, p. 3; Allan 1997, pp. 285–6; Wang 1994, p. 1). I could duplicate it in the middle of the sentence as well, if it's unclear. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 04:03, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
• "Many authors have assumed that" 'many authors' is vague
  • Rewrote the first two sentences of this paragraph to remove the weasel words. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 01:09, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
• "to foreground important information and objects by making them bigger" is 'bigger' really the word used in the reference?
  • Probably not, but it's one of the main points that paper is getting it. In addition to grammatical mumbo jumbo about what classifiers do, they literally make a phrase bigger (longer to pronounce or write, longer to read/hear, etc.), drawing attention to them. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 04:03, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
• "count-classifiers might not serve an abstract grammatical" 'abstract grammatical' sounds oxymoronish
  • Really? It doesn't sound that way to me (maybe that's all the semesters of Chomsky-influenced linguistics classes speaking... "abstract grammatical" to me sounds redundant, if anything). Anyway, I removed "grammatical", so it's just "abstract function" now. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 01:09, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
• "In this way, count-classifiers might not serve an abstract grammatical or cognitive function, but may help in communication by making important information more noticeable and drawing attention to it." This sentence, concluding a paragraph, reads more like the conclusion of an essay than anything else. Let the facts speak for themselves...
  • I was mostly trying to sum up, in simple words, what may have been a confusing discussion. If you think the discussion was easy enough to follow already, this sentence could be removed. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 04:03, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

GeometryGirl (talk) 22:05, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

原子弹

• for 原子弹 don't we use 一枚原子弹 instead of 一颗原子弹? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.186.18.241 (talk) 17:06, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
  • See the section Chinese classifier#Variation in usage, which clearly explains that not everyone uses the same classifier for the same noun all the time.
  • As for which classifier is used more often, the corpus I normally use to investigate these questions (http://ccl.pku.edu.cn:8080/ccl_corpus/advance_search.htm) is temporarily offline, but a quick glance at these Google results suggests that 颗 is more often used. rʨanaɢ (talk) 17:54, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
  • These search results clearly show that 颗 is more widely used. rʨanaɢ (talk) 05:40, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
    • Yes, usage of classifiers varies between people, and there really isn't a specific one that is "right", I don't think. Military literature tends to use 發/发 (fā) for munitions and projectiles - 一发子弹 (one bullet)，一发炮弹 (one artillery shell)，一发箭头 (one arrow)，一发核弹 (one atomic bomb; ROC nomenclature)，一发原子弹 (one atomic bomb; PRC nomenclature)，一发氢弹 (one H-bomb). "一颗" seems to be in common use for general literature. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 07:09, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
• Once the weapon is using, we say 發/发 (fā), e.g. there is only one (发) bullet/bomb in the gun/bomber. If it is not, we use 枚 or 颗. e.g. there is one (枚/颗) bullet/bomb on the ground... In my view, people use 枚 in 书面语(Written language) and 颗 in 口头语(Spoken language)——188.100.67.12 (talk) 18:31, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

More comments

• I (really) don't like "Classifiers themselves" as the title of a section.
  • All those section titles are just abbreviations of "[Development of] classifier phrases", "[Development of] classifiers themselves", "[Development of] general classifiers". I agree it's a bit awkward, but I can't find any better or more accurate way to summarize what those sections are about. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 19:54, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
    • It's really the 'themselves' that is problematic. Why not 'classifier words' if you don't just want to put 'classifier'? 92.149.134.23 (talk) 20:39, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
      • That's a good suggestion; changed. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 20:44, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
• "a few exceptional cases such as head of game" what is 'head of game'?
  • As in "five head of cattle"... but I removed 'game' now so it just reads "head of livestock". rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 19:54, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
• "this category includes measures such as kilometers, liters, or pounds" kilometers, etc. are not measures, but units.
  • Changed. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 19:54, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
• the classifiers are not underlined for the pizza examples
  • Oops, good catch. Fixed now. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 19:54, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
• are Lisa Cheng and Rint Sybesma worthy of being redlinked?
  • Probably not. Sybesma has written a lot of good articles that are widely cited, but I can't find much that's specifically about him or about the influence of his works, so I doubt he falls within WP's current standard of notability; I'm not very familiar with Cheng. So I doubt either of these people would be able to have articles anytime soon. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 19:54, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
• "with most actual words" actual seems redundant
  • Removed. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 19:54, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
• "I've been to Beijing two times" I would change 'two' in the example to 'three', because I think the sentence would otherwise more naturally be translated "I've been to Beijing twice"
  • Good point, changed. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 19:54, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
• "has raised the question of why count-classifiers (as opposed to mass-classifiers) exist at all" -> Is 'has questioned the reason for the existence of count-classifiers' better?
  • That sounds a bit awkward to me...the word "questioned" implies an accusation that something's not true or not correct (ie, "I questioned his reasons for lending you the money" means maybe he had ulterior motives), but this sentence is not meant to imply criticism, just wondering/curiosity. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 19:54, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
    • Ok, my point was just that the construction "of why" isn't great. GeometryGirl (talk) 20:47, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
• "One hypothesis for why count-classifiers exist is that they serve more of a cognitive purpose than a practical one" -> 'Some hypothesize that count-classifiers exist to serve a cognitive purpose more than a practical one.
  • This is similar to the wording I had before ("many authors assume that..."), but you said that sounded too weasel-y. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 19:54, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
    • Again, this is just the 'for why' construction. GeometryGirl (talk) 20:48, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
      • Point taken...personally I don't mind 'why's, but how does this rewording look? rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 21:38, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
• "to organize or categorize objects in the world" -> 'in the world' is unnecessary
  • Changed to "real objects". rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 19:54, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
• (i.e., they provide a linguistic way for speakers to organize or categorize objects in the world) -> Maybe properly make a sentence of that, without the brackets.
  • Moved out of paretheses and after a colon. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 19:54, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
• "Historical linguists have found that number-plus-noun phrases" For consistency, maybe change to "Number – Noun phrases"
  • Reworded. I tried to avoid using "Number - Noun phrases" since that's somewhat jargon-y and this is the first sentence of a section. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 19:54, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
• In an effort to add pictures to the article, maybe we could depict a set nouns that use a common classifier. It could surprise Westerners that Chinese categorize pizzas, papers and benches together. (Actually, that could be a nice selection of 'flat' nouns.)
  • That's an excellent idea. I'll see what I can throw together. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 19:54, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
  • Ok, added File:Tiao-zh.JPG to the Relation to nouns section. (Decided to go with tiao instead of zhang because that is an even more varied group, and more infamous for being varied.) Let me know what you think, rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 22:29, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

... maybe more. GeometryGirl (talk) 19:28, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Quick question for you: I also added some images to the Variation in usage section, and am now fiddling with layout. Do you prefer this version (which perhaps violates MOSIMAGE's suggestion not to wedge text between images and not to put left-aligned images right below section headers), or this version (which is perhaps a bit cramped)? [Another alternative is just to remove the building and just have one image; I added the building example because it was the first to pop into my mind, but actually I think the painting example is better, and it's less redundant—the building is just another example of a phenomenon that already has a different example in the text.] rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 02:25, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

I prefer by far the second version. Maybe we could condense the descriptions a little to 'uncramp' the situation. For example,

"A painting may be referred to with the classifiers 张 and 幅; both phrases mean the same thing, but convey different stylistic effects." -> A painting may be referred to with 张 or 幅 for varying stylistic effects. 92.149.134.23 (talk) 20:36, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

• Both 'ge' and 'gè' are used. Maybe homogenise. 92.149.134.23 (talk) 20:51, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
  • I think you fixed the last one of those. In spoken Chinese, 个 is usually pronounced as toneless (or 'neutral tone') when it's in a noun phrase, and only pronounced as gè when by itself or in something special (for example, in the word 个体, where is is not a classifier but is just the first morpheme of a two-syllable compound word); the writing generally reflects this, too, as far as I know. Thus, I used gè when using the character by itself, and ge when it's in an example phrase. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 21:04, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
• 'count-classifiers are not inherently "necessary"' -> 'inherently "necessary"' is redundant and a more precise word could be used to the replace the expression. Requisite, required, mandatory suggests my thesaurus.
  • "Mandatory" sounds good to me; I think "inherently" is important for the context here, since the discussion is about how mass-classifiers are mandatory by their very nature but count-classifiers are not. Another possible rewording is "not inherently necessary for communication" or something like that. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 21:04, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
    • Changed.
• 'versus' and 'vs.' are used in the titles of sections. Maybe homogenize; or better, remove the construction.
  • Replaced both with "and". rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 00:44, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm off for the WE. We can discuss more issues when I come back. 92.149.134.23 (talk) 23:23, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

All right; thanks a ton for all your help so far! rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 00:44, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Another quick question for you when you get a chance: as an attempt to deal with the underlining issue that some people raised, I made a sample of what the article would look like using color instead of underlines, here. Do you have any opinions on it? (Personally, I am slightly against it because it looks messy to me and there could be accessibility problems, but if there are no alternatives it might still be better than underlining, who knows.) rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 03:24, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

• The double underlining is much better! GeometryGirl (talk) 11:06, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Comments

Lead

• "to define the quantity of a given object" -> wording, do objects really have 'quantities'? and are 'quantities' really 'defined'?
  • I think so, for both questions, but that doesn't mean the wording could be improved. In fact, many linguistic articles (especially in Chinese) just define classifiers as "words that come between a number and a noun". I have been avoiding this definition because it doesn't seem very useful (it defines when classifiers appear, not necessarily what they are) and is not technically accurate (they can appear after nouns, as described in the Special Uses section), although it covers most of the cases. That being said, perhaps a cop-out definition like that is better than speculating about what they are "for". Here are some other definitions that have been thrown around:
    • "denotes some salient perceived or imputed characteristic of the entity to which the associated noun refers", Allan 1977. I would not use this, though; it's very much within the classical/categorical view, which is more or less discredited in most of the modern classifier literature.
    • "syntactically obligatory when the counting of the head noun is to be carried out", Zhang 2007, adapted from Li & Thompson 1981 and a bunch of other stuff. Pretty much the same idea as the definition I described above—it's more focusing on where/when they appear, rather than what they are.
    • words that both help "quantify" a noun and "reveal some characteristics of the entities denoted by the noun", Li Wendan 2000.
  • rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 02:53, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
• "bound morphemes: in other words" -> the colon already means 'in other words'
  • Removed. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 03:04, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
• "a demonstrative ("this" or "that")" -> "this" and "that" don't form an exhaustive list of the demonstratives
  • I wanted to give some sort of example to avoid too much jargon, and I think I avoided using "such as" because it's already used so much. But it could be added. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 03:04, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
    • Is [2] an appropriate solution? GeometryGirl (talk) 11:04, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
      • Yep, that looks good. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 11:42, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
• "and the classifier may often be avoided by using a bare noun" -> is 'often' necessary? are there examples where a bare noun cannot be used?
  • The stuff about avoiding classifier use usually refers only to with the number one (as on "one-CL-person", "one-CL-car", etc., where you can say either that or just "person", "car", depending on what the focus of the sentence is). Any time you actually want to specify a number other than 1, a classifier is necessary. (Also, I figured saying 'often' would be better than making any bold claims like 'classifiers can be avoided altogether if...', which readers might misinterpret—I can just picture some overzealous first-year Chinese student telling his teacher he's not going to bother learning measure words because he read on Wikipedia that he doesn't need them ;) ). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 11:50, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
• "have proposed that the use of classifier phrases" -> the term 'classifier phrase' is used for the first time without explanation
  • Added Phrases consisting of a number, a classifer, and a noun, such as 一个人 (yí ge rén, one-CL person), are known as "classifier phrases". rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 03:26, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
• "Finally, in addition to simply counting items" -> 'simply' is redundant
  • Removed. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 03:26, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
• "to signify "all of" or "every"" -> maybe add ', respectively'
  • Replaced with " a plural or indefinite quantity", in accordance with a similar change in the respective subsection.
• The traditional of 条 is 條
  • Added by User:Deadkid dk. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 03:26, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
• "(for example, "dictionary" takes the same ..." -> is this example really needed in the lead?
  • I think this probably wouldn't make sense without examples, and I was trying to keep the lede accessible enough to work (at least somewhat) as stand-alone reading for a lay reader. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 03:04, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
• "about where the Chinese system came from" -> 'about the origins of the Chinese system'?
  • Replaced. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 03:04, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
• "and probably moved in front" -> Was Chinese always written from left to right?
  • "in front" doesn't necessarily mean "to the left" ;). It only seems that way to us Latin script users. Anyway, in response to your question, Chinese was written right to left for a long time, but that's irrelevant; 'in front' refers to the position of the words as they are read, regardless of the direction of the script, so for a right-to-left script 'in front' means 'to the right' and for a left-to-right script it means the opposite. (and for a top-to-bottom script, it means 'above.) rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 03:04, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
• "valued items such as horses and poems" -> are poems items? are horses even items?
  • Is [3] ok? GeometryGirl (talk) 10:50, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
    • (Sorry, I forgot to respond to this one last night) "Culturally significant nouns" reads a bit awkwardly to me...personally, I don't have a problem with calling horses and poems "items" in this context, but I can try to brainstorm better suggestions. Anyway, I think it's important to say something like that, because it's not the words themselves that are significant, it's the things in the real-world that they correspond to. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 11:42, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
      • I get your point that it is not the words themselves that are significant. (Actually I knew this problem when writing it...) But a better wording can probably be found. GeometryGirl (talk) 12:09, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
        • What about just "culturally valued things"? Would that be too informal? rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 12:12, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
• "many words that are classifiers today started out as full nouns" -> can we replace 'full nouns' by 'common nouns'?
  • I don't think so; the point is that they had all the characteristics of nouns. We could replace it with "real nouns" or "actual nouns", although that sounds somewhat like it's suggesting that classifiers are no more than crappy nouns ;). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 03:08, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
    • I don't understand. Saying that classifiers were common nouns [in the grammatical sense] implies that they had all the characteristics of (common) nouns. GeometryGirl (talk) 10:55, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
      • Hm...true, but I don't think that says it as directly. Also, 'common noun' refers specifically to non-proper nouns; while clssifiers all (AFAIK) did come from nouns that weren't proper nouns, the common/proper-ness is not what's of relevance in this section. Also, I had to look up "common noun" to see what it meant, as I don't think I've heard it in a very long time (although I guess you could say the same thing about 'full noun', I'm not sure if it's even a real word). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 11:42, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
• For the lead image, maybe write on top of the left image 'simplified' and on top of the right 'traditional' so as clean up the description.
  • You mean adding text to the image itself? I don't think there is a way to add text outside the image (ie, captions both above and below) without making up a whole new template. Also, personally I don't find the description too long or cluttered, and it seems to me that adding text above the image would be just as messy as the current caption is. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 03:08, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
    • What do you think of [4]? GeometryGirl (talk) 10:50, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
• Maybe add somewhere in the lead that almost all Chinese classifiers are just one character long. Is this covered in the text later?
  • They're not all one character long; there are a few that have multiple characters (I think I mentioned them a couple sections above this one: These include measurement units like 英里、公斤、etc., and monosyllabic classifiers as pronounced in dialects with erhua, such as 块儿). There are also "compound classifiers" such as "10架次航天飞机" (10 [plane classifier]-[times classifier] sky airplane), which means "10 flights"—these classifiers correspond roughly to English constructions like "per person per trip" and things like that. I think their status is somewhat controversial, and in any case they are pretty uncommon (I don't remember having ever encountered ones like this in real life, and only just recently found them mentioned in a book), but they are at least examples of possible multi-character classifiers. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 03:08, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
    • I saw what you wrote earlier. However my point is that, as you say, they are very rare and merely of dictionary existence. Isn't this an interesting fact to add to the article? GeometryGirl (talk) 10:50, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
      • While the compound classifiers are rare (or at least seem rare to me), the other ones are not so much; less common than others, but I wouldn't call them 'rare'. Also, the intro does mention that they are bound morphemes (I thought function words were also mentioned somewhere, but it looks like they're not, maybe I removed it somewhere), which do tend to be short. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 11:42, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

86.213.118.112 (talk) 17:59, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Usage

• "Furthermore, numbers and demonstratives are often not required in Chinese, so speakers may choose not to use a number" what about demonstrative for the latter part of the sentence?
  • Sorry, not sure what you mean? rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 12:02, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
    • Well you first say "numbers and demonstratives are often not required" but later just "may choose not to use a number [only]". Should this be 'may choose not to use a number or a demonstrative'? GeometryGirl (talk) 12:15, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
• Can we change the Zhangsan example to a Wang example?
  • I don't see why not...but why does it need changed? Zhangsan is sort of a "John Doe" name used in Chinese example sentences a lot—in fact, on zh-wiki Zhangsan redirects to Placeholder name. Do you think using a one-character name would be better? (Even then, though, it would seem unnatural to use one character, as someone named Wang generally goes by a name like 小王 "little Wang" or 老王 "old Wang"—also on the Chinese "placeholder name" article, all the examples given are two-character names.) rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 12:02, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
    • I was thinking of something like XiaoWang that seems to be a simpler/more widely known name. But if Zhangsan is the common placeholder name, that's great! We could even link Zhangsan to the relevant part of the article then. GeometryGirl (talk) 12:12, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
• "classifiers have other limited uses" why 'limited'? do we have a reference?
  • Probably not necessary. Changed to "some other uses." rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 12:02, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
    • I like having "some" there, though, because the other uses of classifiers are not very much, and just saying "classifiers have other uses" seems to imply (unintentionally) that they have lots of uses. (on a side note...I got a good laugh out of this :) ) rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 12:08, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
      • OK GeometryGirl (talk) 12:15, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Types

• "The vast majority", "In everyday speech" -> not encyclopaedic wording '
  • I can change the first to just "majority"...simply 'most' is not very expressive and would almost be weasel-like. As for "in everyday speech", this seems perfectly encyclopedic to me, especially given that "in informal speech" is not quite accurate (the distinction is not one of formal vs. informal, but technical vs. non-technical). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 18:17, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
• "but the words grouped under this term are not all the same" -> this is a vacuous statement, every word is different. Maybe add an adverb, e.g. 'not all the same grammatically/semantically/...'
  • That was what the next sentence is for (at least, that's what I intended while writing this). Anyway, I have at least added 'types of', for "the types of words grouped under this term are not all the same". rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 18:17, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
• "numerous specialized classifier dictionaries" -> 'numerous' is weasel
  • Removed. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 18:17, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
• "range from "several dozen"[11] or "about 50",[12] to over 900." maybe explain the discrepancy with giving the context in which these citations came from. Also, the next sentence says most dictionaries include 120 to 150 classifiers, which doesn't fall in any of category described in the previous sentence!
  • I put this in a separate sentence on purpose, to give it more weight; I was trying to put the extremes in one sentence and then the most common estimate in its own. To make this clearer, I could remove the "about 50" to make it more obvious that these are just two extremes: from "several dozen"[11] to over 900[12]. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 18:17, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
• "The number of classifiers and the complexity of the classifier system is evident in the fact that there exist numerous specialized "classifier dictionaries"." I object both the content and wording here. For the content, why would the numerous specialized dictionaries reflect upon the number or complexity of the classifier system? For the wording, "is evindent in the fact" is weasel.
  • What about something like "classifiers are so numerous, and the classifier system so complex, that they have given rise to specialized 'classifier dictionaries'"? I think the fact that classifier dictionaries exist is important to mention, and was mostly just trying to find the best place to work it in. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 18:34, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
• any events (such as ballgames, fires, and movies) -> are fires and movies events? (or even ballgames?)
  • I think so. Perhaps not in the most common sense (like special events), but they are in the semantic sense (things that happen). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 18:34, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
• The sentence starting with "Qian Hu defines" is too long.
  • I could split it into two sentences (a short one about Hu, and a long one about Li & Thompson). Or I could just remove the whole thing about 场, which would make it a normal-length sentence. I think it is a somewhat illustrative example (and in the discussion above, User:Kwamikagami took some interest in it), but it may not be necessary to get the main point across. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 18:34, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
• "bang ("pound") -> (bang, "pound") for consistentcy
  • Fixed. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 18:34, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
• "according to standard measures but by containers they come in" -> 'by the containers they come in'
  • Changed. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 18:34, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
• "while mass-classifiers are nearly universal" contradicts the sentence " All languages, including English, have mass-classifiers"
  • Removed "nearly". Linguists are often hesitant to call anything "universal" (even things as basic as vowels, or nouns...there are some crazy languages that people claim have no vowels, and languages that people claim have no nouns), but that's mostly academic writing...for WP purposes I think this is fine. And "nearly universal" does seem to suggest that there are major examples of languages with no classifiers, which there aren't; really the only accurate wording would be something like "as far as we know, mass-classifiers appear in all the languages that we've really thought hard about and we can't imagine any language getting by without them", but of course that would be awfully weasely. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 18:34, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
• "and mass-classifier being a sort of" -> 'sort of' is not encyclopaedic wording
  • This is in the "type of", "kind of" sense, not "sorta..." sense. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 18:34, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
• "is often fuzzy" is borderline wording
  • I think 'fuzzy' is more descriptive, but anyway I've changed it to "unclear". rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 18:34, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
• "They posit that "count-classifier" and "mass-classifier" are the extremes of a continuum, with most words falling somewhere in between." I don't understand how classifiers can be 'in between'. Also, should 'words' be replaced by 'classifiers'?
  • Somewhere in between a 100% count-classifier and a 100% mass-classifier; this can be because it the classifier can be used in different ways with different words and thus plays the role of both mass- and count-classifier, or it can be because whether it's being used as one or the other is unclear. For example, in yi ke mi ("a grain of rice"), is "rice" a mass noun and ke is a mass-classifier dividing it into grain-sized pieces? Or does the word mi also refer to the grains of rice (in addition to rice in general) and ke being used as a count-classifier for small/round things—keeping in mind that ke is also often used with things that clearly are count nouns, such as bullets. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 18:34, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Relation to nouns

• What are "geographical features"?
  • Changed to "mountains", which is mostly what this was referring to. (Hills and islands, at least, also take this classifier, but I think 'mountains' covers it well enough.)
• "Even further subdivisions" -> 'even', 'further' and 'sub-' all mean more or less the same thing
  • Is just "further subdivisions" ok? It's a tiny bit redundant, I guess, but just "subdivisions" by itself sounds a bit awkward to me. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 18:07, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
• "i.e. box and book are not related in meaning" -> i.e. should be e.g.
  • Changed. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 18:07, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
• "include categories of shape..." -> 'include the categories of shape'
  • Changed. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 18:07, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
• maybe link animacy
  • It seems like it already is linked here; is there another place you were thinking to link it? rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 18:07, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
• "and function (tools, vehicles, machines)" are tools, vehicles or machines functions?
  • I think this refers to functions things perform. For example, most tools use 把 (a general classifier for tools, which probably came about because you can hold them in your hand), most vehicles use 辆 (general classifier for vehicles), and most machines use 台 (general classifier for machines). The point is that these things aren't really grouped by physical characteristics per se, since a lot of them have physical characteristics in common...it's more about grouping things by the functions they perform (ie, all things that you drive are grouped together, etc.). "Function" is the word used in Tai (1994). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 18:07, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
• "some classifier-noun pairings are entirely arbitrary" -> remove 'entirely'
  • Removed. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 18:07, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
• arbitrariness (used 3 times in just one paragraph) is a bit of a heavy word (as in clunky)
  • I'm not sure of any better words to use. "Arbitrariness" might be somewhat jargony—it's a word that people use regularly within this field, although it might sound like a made-up word to most people. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 18:08, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

GeometryGirl (talk) 14:49, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

High-level comments (i.e. regarding the stucture)

Now that I have gone through -- and digested -- the article in some detail, I realise the structure of the article can be improved. Here are problems and suggestions:

• The 'Count-classifiers and mass-classifiers' section should maybe be split in two because it is too long and slightly messy. The introduction of the section 'Types' can explain in general terms the conundrum between the two types, with each subsection 'Count-classifiers' and 'Mass-classifiers' going into the details of the matter.

• The section 'Usage' is more grammatical than anything else. Can we rename it to 'Grammatical usage' or 'Syntax' (I prefer the latter).

• In conjunction with the previous comment, I would rename the awkward-sounding title 'Relation to nouns' to 'Usage', which I think is more appropriate.

• The 'Purpose' section seems very ad-hoc to me, coming after all the rest, instead of being distilled in various places of the article. A symptom of this is that the 'Variation in usage' subsection has a lot pertaining to the 'Purpose' section. In the 'Purpose' section I see two types of information: a "cognitive" part, and a "grammatical/stylistic" part. I think the "cognitive part" goes well in the 'Count-classifiers' section, with the "grammatical/stylistic" part in the 'Relation with nouns' section. If you don't like spreading the information accross the article, I would propose to clearly separate and further expand the two parts.

What do you think? Some of these comments suggest relatively high-scale changes but I think it is definitely worth it. GeometryGirl (talk) 21:39, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Here is a draft of the plan:

1 Syntax
1.1 General syntax
1.2 Specialized constructions

2 Types
2.1 Count-classifiers
2.2 Mass-classifiers
2.3 Verbal classifiers

3 Usage and purpose
3.1 Categories and prototypes
3.2 Neutralization
3.3 Variation in usage

GeometryGirl (talk) 21:48, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

• I think calling the first section "syntax" might be unnecessarily intimidating for some readers (if the intro isn't already intimidating enough ;) ). The main reason I added this section is because there's really no point discussing the deep stuff about classifiers unless the reader fully understands what they are, where they occur, etc; it wasn't so much meant to be an in-depth syntax discussion as just a collection of examples so that for the rest of the article it would be clear what we're dealing with. (Another reason is that, this being Wikipedia, I bet readers come sometimes just to get help on their intro Chinese homework.) Anyway, I think "Usage" is an acceptable title, given that is pedagogical connotation is precisely that: prescriptive descriptions of how and when you should use a particular grammar construction.
• I agree that the count-classifier vs. mass-classifier section has gotten big. On the other hand, it would be difficult to split them in any comfortable way, as you can't really discuss one without discussing the other. If we just split it paragraph by paragraph, right now we would have one very short section on count-classifiers (just a few sentences), then one section on mass-classifiers, then that final paragraph (comparing both) with nowhere to go.
• As for verbal classifiers...this used to be in its own section, but I moved it out because their status as an special subclass of classifiers, while widely used in literature as recently as a couple years ago, is questionable (see my discussion with User:Kwamikagami a few sections above). On the other hand, at least now this section has enough text to be somewhat worthwhile as a section, so I don't have strong feelings either way about where to put it.
• I agree that "relation to nouns" is an awkward title, but I think "usage" is also awkward (not to mention I still like that title on the section where it's currently being used) and misses out on the main point of this section. The vast majority of research on classifiers, I would say, revolves around the relationship between classifiers and the nouns they classify. I.e., how nouns get lumped together, what kind of classifiers exist (the very subdivisions that are argued about--mass- and count-classifiers, nominal and verbal classifiers, etc. etc.--are based on this relationship), and how people, when given a noun, choose which classifier to stick on it.
• As for the purpose section... the two different parts of it (cognitive vs. stylistic) are meant to contrast with one another, which is why I put them together in one section. It is possible, though, that it's not necessary to have a purpose section at all (the question of "why do classifiers exist" is not that widely written about, I don't think), although I'm not sure then where I'd put the stuff about Li Wendan's study (it's relevant in the Usage section--and is mentioned there already--but it's also relevant to the 'purpose' stuff and can't really be discussed in that way until the whole "relation with nouns" thing has been discussed). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 23:02, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Comments

• Don't mix CE and AD in one article, per MOS
  • Oops; fixed. I only found one instance of AD; did you see any others? rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 16:37, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
    • No, I think that's all. GeometryGirl (talk) 16:49, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
• "From then until the 1940s, linguists such as Ma, Wang Li, and Li Jinxi treated classifiers just a type of noun that "expresses a quantity".[76] Lü Shuxiang first treated them as a separate category in the 1940s, calling them "unit words" (单位词 dānwèicí) in his 1940s Outline of Chinese Grammar (中国文法要略)" -> 1940s used three times in one sentence
  • Removed one instance with this edit. It's hard to be more specific about the date since Outline of Chinese Grammar was actually apparently published in three volumes from 1941 to 1956 [5] and none of the sources I have specify which one this was in. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 16:37, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
    • OK GeometryGirl (talk) 16:49, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
• "in addition to counting items" -> other uses of classifiers are described above
  • Is "in addition to these uses" better? rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 16:37, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
    • Great GeometryGirl (talk) 16:49, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
• "Some nouns became attached to mandatory classifiers" -> awkward, needs ce
  • Changed to "became associated with specific classifiers". rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 16:37, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
    • Better GeometryGirl (talk) 16:49, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
• there is a dead link
  • That is something that confused me. This tool claims that the pku link is dead, but even after clearing my cache and restarting my browser the link worked fine for me. (Actually, now the tool says the connection has been "reset by peer"). I don't see any other dead links (in fact, I think that is one of the only external links in the article). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 16:37, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
    • OK, if it's taken care of GeometryGirl (talk) 16:49, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
• "In addition to these semantic differences, there are differences" -> differences used twice in one sentence
  • It's a sentence about differences, so I didn't see it as awkward...but if there is a good synonym I suppose one could be plugged in. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 16:37, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
• "and function (tools, vehicles, machines, etc.)" -> tools, vehicles, machines are not functions
  • This was not meant to be a list of functions, but a list of things grouped together by functions—tools all serve a roughly similar function (using them in your hand to do stuff) and often have the same classifier, likewise for machines, etc. This is also the way they are described in the source. I can try to think of a clearer way to put it. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 16:37, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
    • Well the way the sentence is constructed it ought to be a list of functions. Indeed, "long, flat, or round" are shapes, "large or smalll" are sizes, "soft or hard" are consistencies, etc.92.149.19.123 (talk) 11:20, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
• "may have had something to do with" -> awkward

Unencyclopeadic words/wordings:
-'thing'
-'something'
-'and so on with'

GeometryGirl (talk) 15:07, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

• I've removed "and so on with" and a few instances of "thing" words when possible. In many cases, though, I used these on purpose. First of all, "thing" is a less specific term than more formal-sounding words like "item" or "object" that I could use, and since classifiers can be used with many things (not just physical 'items' and 'objects') I wanted to use as general a term as possible. Also, I wanted to keep the article from getting bogged down in jargon or having too dry of a tone; it might be accurate to say "noun" or "object" all the time, but it would make the article more difficult to read and less inviting (just try searching the page for "thing" and saying "noun" or "object" in its place every time—it sounds dry even to me, a linguist). But anyway, I have it down to about 5 instances of "things" in the whole article now (a few times when they're used in parallel structure, such as "x classifier for x thing, y classifier for y thing, z classifier for z thing", I counted them as one, since in parallel structure like that it would be awkward to switch up the words for no reason), so hopefully this concern will be allayed. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 23:15, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Some more comments: —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.149.19.123 (talk) 11:39, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

• "the mass-classifier 盒 (hé, "box") may be used with anything in a box, such as cigarettes or books"

The phrasing suggests that cigarettes and books come by default in a box. While this is most often the case for cigarettes, it is not for books. Anyway, I don't see why examples are necessary or relevant; tangerines and light-bulbs could may come boxes as well.

• The main reason for using examples was to show how two things which use separate count-classifiers can use the same mass-classifier, which I think is important to expressing the difference between the two. It was not meant to be suggested these are "defaults"—default has nothing to do with the mass-CL use, which is precisely the point: you can measure anything with these CLs. 盒 hé could be used for boxes of books, boxes of computers, boxes of bouncy balls, boxes of monkeys, or anything. Likewise, "books" could be measured with any word like this... a box full of books, a room full of books, a boat full of books, a bag full of books, etc. I think originally I had this sentence worded "may be used with anything that happens to be in a box", but a past reviewer thought that was unencyclopedic wording or something. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 15:40, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

• Ok. The wording "that happens to be" avoids ambiguity, but we may be able to find something even better. As for the examples, it is probably best to avoid cigarettes, since they come (by default) in boxes! What about a wording like "盒 may be used to count boxes of objects, as in 一盒苹果 (yi he pingguo, "A box of apples")"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by GeometryGirl (talk • contribs) 16:22, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

• I have no problem with exchanging "cigarettes" for another example. I wouldn't go with apples because, to the best of my knowledge, they only use 个 (when being counted individually), and I would prefer to use an example that also uses a specialized classifier so that I can point out how they use the same mass-CL but different count-CL. Light bulbs, which you pointed out above, would work for this: 灯泡 apparently uses 盏 zhǎn. The only issue with that is that it's a two-syllable word whereas the book example is one-syllable, but I can try to think of a way to tweak them—what I'll try now is replacing book with 教材 (textbook), which uses the same classifier. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 19:22, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

• "Chinese has a large number of nominal classifiers; estimates of the number (mass-classifiers as well as count-classifiers) in Mandarin range from "several dozen"[11] or "about 50",[12] to over 900.[13]"

The numbers come as "out of the blue". Some explanation of the discrepancies should be given.

• There is a bit of explanation in the lede, where it says "depending on how they are counted"—these definitions vary because some include all types of classifiers/'measure words' (even verbal, compound, 些, and others), some include only count-CL, etc.; some might count traditional/simplified as separate (for example, simplified 只 corresponds to at least 3 traditional classifiers) while some may have counted them together; and, most importantly, the definition of 'classifier' has changed over time, so older books (like Chao) have different numbers. I don't know how much of these specifics I can include without a source, but I could add a footnote explaining some of these things and basically repeating some of the stuff from the History section, which talks about the changing definition of "classifier". rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 15:44, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Ok, so maybe only give the numbers for the current definition, and leaves the other numbers in the notes (or somewhere else). Also, the sentence says "estimates of the number (mass-classifiers as well as count-classifiers)" which doesn't include verbal classifiers and other non-mass-classifier and non-count-classifiers.

• I've made this series of edits to rework that paragraph, I think it also addresses several of your comments below. I didn't move the whole thing into a note yet since I think that would leave very little in the prose (it would probably become so short it would need to be merged into another paragraph), but I tried to clearly set off the 120–150 estimate from the list of "out of the blue" numbers, to make it clear to the reader that these are the most 'current' or relevant estimates, whereas the others are there more for background information. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 19:56, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

• "Regular dictionaries include 120 to 150,[14] although it is likely that only about two dozen of these are in everyday, informal use.[15]"

What do you mean by "likely"? What does the source say?

• The source says it is definitely the case that only these 20-some classifiers are in common use. I added "likely" just as a way to soften it up, so I wasn't just reporting this one claim as fact (since I'm sure there are people who disagree with Erbaugh's finding, have issues with her methodology or the corpus she used—which I think was just her own sample collected for that paper—,or whatever things like that). I could change "likely" to "possible"; mainly I just wanted to avoid saying "so-and-so claims that..." because I already say that a lot throughout the article. Judging from my personal experience, I think her estimate of 20-some "core classifiers" is pretty reasonable (although I don't agree with all the ones she chooses to include in that group), which is probably why I went with "likely" rather than some other softener. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 19:56, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

• "The number of classifiers and the complexity of the classifier system is evident in the fact that there exist specialized "classifier dictionaries"."

Change 'number' to 'amount' or 'quantity' (this is the third time you use number in the same paragraph)

• "The number of classifiers and the complexity of the classifier system is evident in the fact that there exist specialized "classifier dictionaries"."

"Evident" is weasel. Also phrasing suggests that the existence of classifier dictionaries imply a large amount of classifiers and a complex classifier system. This is rather strong and weasely. Maybe rephrase to something lighter such as "reflects in the existence of classifier dictionaries".

• Simpler still would be "classifiers are so numerous that specialized classifier dictionaries have been published". I think I had a wording like that before one of the reviews and it got changed somewhere along the lines, though I dont' remember why (it might have been that a reviewer didn't like that it was implying a causal relationship, or something like that). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 19:56, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

• "classifier dictionaries"

Why quotation marks?

• I think that was an attempt to set it off a bit more from the text and make it clearer or something. But I have since removed it in my rewrite of that paragraph. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 20:03, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

• "While mass-classifiers do not necessarily bear any semantic relationship to the noun with which they are used (e.g., box and book are not related in meaning, but one can still say "a box of books"), count-classifiers do."

This sentence contradicts "Some classifier-noun pairings are arbitrary"

• I don't think it contradicts; only some pairings are arbitrary, many are not (ie, many do have a relationship). Also, these sentences have different purposes. The first is intended to explain the difference between mass-CL and count-CL, where the other is to get at more nitty-gritty details behind how count-CL work. Thus, it makes sense for them to have slightly different focuses. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 15:29, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

• "This occurs especially often among children[54] and aphasics (individuals with damage to language-relevant areas of the brain),[52][55] although normal speakers also neutralize frequently."

Why are children and aphasics abnormal? Maybe most of the population is a child or suffers from aphasia. Add a reference; or better, chose a more politically correct phrasing like "although other speakers neutralize frequently" (note that I think 'also' is useless here).

• I don't think this is un-PC; in linguistics, at least, a "normal speaker" is considered to be one with a fully-developed language and no brain damage, mental retardation, or other deficiencies. Much research talks about a distinction between "child language" and "adult language" (which is assumed to be the "normal", or default, thing that we mean when we refer to language). Likewise, Kathleen Ahrens' paper cited in this article refers to "Classifier production in normals and aphasics". When I say "normal speakers", I'm not saying children and aphasics are bad or abnormal people; I'm just saying they are not "average" speakers of the language in a linguistic sense. And they definitely aren't the majority of the population, not in any population I know of but certainly not in the Chinese-speaking population. As for "also," I think this is necessary to express that it's not just them, but everyone, who does classifier neutralization; if you read it without the "also", then it sounds (especially with the "although") that normal and child/aphasic speakers are being contrasted, whereas actually I'm comparing them (pointing out that they both neutralize classifiers a lot). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 15:50, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

• Ok, great. Then we could probably redlink normal to normal (linguistics).

• I'm not sure "normal" is enough of an "official" jargon term to warrant its own article, and thus I would feel weird about redlinking something that I don't think will ever have an article (not to mention it would just draw more attention to the word "normal", and hence to the implication that children and aphasics aren't normal). That being said, though, I won't object if someone else adds it; it's just that I personally don't think it's necessary. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 20:03, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

• "In other words, when asked what the appropriate count-classifier is for a given word, speakers will answer correctly, but in regular speech they are very likely to use the general classifier"

What does this add to the preceding sentence "It has been reported that most speakers know the appropriate classifiers for the words they are using and believe, when asked, that those classifiers are obligatory, but nevertheless use 个 without even realizing it in actual speech."?

• Probably nothing; I was just trying to make sure the point was being made clearly (which is why, in general, this article has lots of examples and lots of "in other words"es, especially after complicated parts). But if you feel it's redundant, then the point must have been clear enough already, so I've removed it. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 20:03, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

• "On the other hand, count-classifiers are not inherently mandatory"

What do you mean by "inherently"? What does the source say? Do you mean that they are redundant?

• By "not inherently mandatory" I mean they aren't needed, in of themselves, for communication (unlike mass-CL, which by their very definition are pretty much necessary—every language needs some way to measure quantities of things, and mass-CL are the units for doing that). The three refs at the end of the sentence are actually more for the other bit of the sentence (the claim that all languages have mass-CL, but not all have count-CL), although Wang p. 1 does say this: "All languages need measures to indicate quantity.... however, only some languages need classifiers." (The "all languages need measures" is getting at the "inherently mandatory" bit for mass-CL: they are necessary for communication, by their very nature. While the rest of this doesn't specifically say what I was saying in the article, i.e. that count-CL are not necessary by their very nature, I think it's at least strongly implied). Anyway, this all should be distinguished from "redundancy", which is not what I was trying to claim there: something may not be necessary by its very nature (like mass-CLs are) but still become a necessary part of a language anyway. For example, languages don't need tense and aspect markings like English has (past tense "-ed", etc.), but many have them; someone could, if they really wanted to, argue that these things are "redundant" to indicators like context and adverbials, but I imagine most English speakers would say that past tense "-ed" is necessary for getting their point across and is not "redundant". rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 20:16, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

• Sometimes the translation of Chinese words and sentences are in quotation marks, and sometimes not. This should be made consistent. (I prefer with no quotation marks.)
  • This is intentional. The literal, word-by-word glosses (for example, things like one-CL-fish or me-possessive car) don't have quotes; the approximate English translations do. So, in lines where there are both glosses and translations, you'll see both with and without quotations, as in

    我去过三次北京 (wǒ qù-guo sān cì Běijīng, I go-PAST three-CL Beijing, "I have been to Beijing three times")

    I tried to use word-by-word glosses as little as possible here, especially after the first couple sections, since I figured they might be cumbersome or intimidating for readers without a linguistic background. Nevertheless, they are necessary sometimes, to help the reader show where the translation came from (especially in more complicated sentences like the one above—for a reader who doesn't know Chinese and is expecting English-like grammar and word order, if there were no glosses it might be difficult to see where exactly the classifier phrase is within the sentence, and how things are working). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 15:29, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

• "One commonly-held view of its etymology is that it was originally a noun referring to bamboo stalks"

Ungainly. Is "Some suggest it was originally a noun for bamboo stalks" better?

• Changed. In the process, though, I had to tweak your previous rewording (to make 个 the focus of the sentence preceding sentence... so that this one would read as being about the etymology of 个, not the etymology of the general classifier). I added "historicaly" at the beginning of the sentence; it might be a bit redundant, but it was the best way I could think of to keep from starting the sentence with 个. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 20:16, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

GeometryGirl (talk) 13:59, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

• In the introduction where the Chinese word for the classifier is written in both traditional and simplified, the first term (liang) has been switched.

Silverflight8 (talk) 01:40, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

• • Um, they're exactly the same character. They're just being displayed in different fonts. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 03:21, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Main Page Typo

Hi. On Wikipedia's main page, the tease for this article has this sentence: "There are as many as 150 different classifiers, and many nouns are associated with certain ones—for example, flat objects such as tables use the classifier zhāng, whereas long objects such lines use tiáo." I think "whereas long objects such lines use tiáo" should be "whereas long objects such /as/ lines use tiáo". Unfortunately I don't know how to change it. --Smoggyrob | Talk 01:10, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out. In the future, you can report main page errors to WP:ERRORS, and might get a faster response there (I was out playing badminton for a couple hours so there may have been no one watching this talk page). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 03:21, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Un-helpful wikilink

The first paragraph of this article uses the word "foreground" which links to the article "focus", like this: foreground. However the article for focus doesn't even use the word "foreground", so folks who click the link looking to have the term defined are just SOL. I will go ahead and remove the wikilink unless anyone has an objection. 76.115.173.255 (talk) 18:52, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure linking to focus (linguistics) is even accurate. I can only read the abstract of the cited reference, Li 2000, but it looks like that paper is about the use of classifiers to introduce salient and thus potentially topical discourse referents. That doesn't fit the most common use of the term 'focus' in linguistics, which has (something) to do with what a sentence is asserting. (Of course, linguists have used 'focus' in a bunch of different ways; it's a terminological nightmare.) --Chris Johnson (talk) 09:25, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Add Traditional Support?

Just wondering if it's possible\desireable to add support for traditional characters. Came to this page to look up a measure word and discovered it's all simplified so I can't actually read the characters - have to rely on the pinyin. Well I can get the 個 but that's about it. Somewhat frustrating! 114.35.25.165 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 06:17, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, that's simply not true. Throughout the page, in every case where the simplified and traditional characters are different, both are given (and displayed in different font wrappers--it's all actually very cumbersome). See, for example, 张 and 条 in the second paragraph: each is followed by a traditional character. I don't know what article you were looking at. rʨanaɢ (talk) 13:09, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

I wish that were true, unfortunately it's not so. The first paragraph lists 一個人 but uses simplified. Does clarify further down I'll concede. The first table lists various forms of 這三隻... but you need to know 這 and 隻. The next table uses what I think is 頭 but I'm not sure - I'm relying on pinyin\English to guess. Shortly after there's 買匹馬. Skipping way down toward the bottom the link for 馬氏文通 is given as 马氏文通. Anyone not familiar with 簡體 is going to have trouble :-( 114.35.25.165 (talk)

Changes to lede

I have reverted these two edits. While I think there is some good stuff to be found in those changes, they're overall not an improvement. Firstly, mentions important parts of the main text (such as the pragmatics of quantifiers, and the category vs. prototype discussion) are removed from the lede, which goes against WP:MoS: the lede should introduce all the main points of the article. Secondly, things have been moved around in a way that makes it flow poorly--for example, the last paragraph suddenly jumps from talking about history to talking about usage, and the second paragraph suddenly jumps without transition from discussion of variation to a non sequitur statement about which classifier is most common.

Given how much this lede has been vetted in the past, a more constructive approach to improving it would be to individually point out and discuss each part of the lede that you think could be changed, rather than rewriting large swaths of it in one fell swoop. See, for example, some of the point-by-point discussions above. Best, rʨanaɢ (talk) 13:06, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Or alternatively, instead of reverting all the changes, you could just deal with the particular points that you object to. The version you've restored is vastly inferior in my opinion, if the aim is to introduce the subject in a clear and logical way. It talks of technical issues of pragmatics and prototypes, which few readers will be able to understand out of context, but fails even to give a clear explanation of what these things (classifiers) are and do. And the flow of ideas is far poorer, and there are apparent errors which you've restored without even thinking. Not very helpful at all, sorry. W. P. Uzer (talk) 13:55, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Look, I know you are new here, but there is a process to doing these things. Please read WP:Edit warring and WP:BRD. You boldly made changes, but since they have been disputed you should not keep making them; the appropriate action is to have a discussion here about the changes you would like to make. I explicitly said above that we can have that discussion here, and I tried to be civil about it, but you just ignored this. Also, calling another editor stupid is never a productive way to edit an article. For now I am reverting back to the status-quo version of the article, and I will respond to your points here, one by one, so that we can have the discussion I originally suggested. rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:18, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Please read WP:BOLD and WP:OWN. We should be working together to make this article better. Restoring mistakes just to teach another editor a lesson is really, in my opinon, stupid, and is obviously counterproductive. W. P. Uzer (talk) 14:22, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Who ever said I was restoring mistakes to "teach you a lesson"? I am restoring the earlier version of the article to follow the standard protocol for dispute resolution, which I gave you a link to. Please read it. rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:31, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

You are clearly saying "I'm in charge here, you'll do what I say." I note you didn't revert your own recent change to the status quo version. This is how it comes across anyway - sorry if that wasn't what was in your head, but you must understand that when you behave in this way, it seems arrogant and doesn't help create a cooperative atmosphere. W. P. Uzer (talk) 14:47, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Responses to points raised

• not true in general
  • While you're right that there are some morphemes like 头 which can be used both as a classifier and a word, when they are used as classifiers they are bound morphemes and are semantically null [usually--there are of course exceptions, like the 一节课/一门课 example discussed in the article). If this is ambiguous we could clarify the wording of this sentence, but it's an important point so it shouldn't be flat-out removed. rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:31, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
    • They can't be both words and bound morphemes, which is what your version says. Please stop restoring obvious errors like this. Better to say nothing than to say something that is manifestly wrong. (As I see it, though some authors might approach it differently, a morpheme is either bound or free, it can't be bound in one instance and free in another.) W. P. Uzer (talk) 14:29, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
      • I think this rewording looks ok; restoring it without the "always". rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:54, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
• another error restored by stupid reverter
  • This is not an error. In standard Mandarin, yī becomes yí before 4th-tone syllables, which 个 is in its citation form. There is a degree of variability here because of phonological opacity: in this context gè is often unstressed and thus surfaces as toneless, so sometimes the yī-->yí change is applied and sometimes it isn't. The bottom line is that both pronunciations are observed. rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:31, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
    • Well, I've learnt something, thank you, but I still think it better to use the more standard pinyin transcription, so as not to confuse people with off-topic complications. W. P. Uzer (talk) 14:47, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
• if people don't know the characters. they won't recognize that the underlining is underlining
  • The underlining issue was discussed at length here and here. Long story short, there is a reason to do it, and it was better than any of the alternatives we could come up with. On most browsers this shows up as a thick underline that is is well below the line of text and is distinguishable from the character; is this not the case for your browser? rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:40, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
    • No it isn't (my browser is MSIE). The underline is lower than the characters, but not "well below", and not thick. I thought the way I did it was an alternative that is more clear all round, quite apart from avoiding the underlining browser issues. W. P. Uzer (talk) 14:50, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
• vacuous statement, of course speakers can choose what to say, subject to all the usual constraints
  • This probably could be reworded. Maybe somehow integrated into the bit about pragmatics. I do think it's important to somehow express that classifiers are not "mandatory" (in the knee-jerk grammar-school way that learners without much experience with colloquial language assume, thanks to introductory texts that sometimes give the impression that classifiers are "always" necessary). The reason I'm saying it might be worked into the bit about pragmatics is that I think when I originally wrote this what I had in mind was the discussion about "pragmatic" factors that influence whether a classifier phrase is used at all. Another issue (which I don't think is mentioned at all) is that it's actually totally grammatical [in colloquial speech only, and in certain phrases that have gotten somewhat solidified] to use a demonstrative or number without a classifier, e.g. 这人太烦了. At the time I didn't have sources discussing this, just anecdotal experience, so I couldn't bring it up (now there's a new book out, so I'm excited to see if she mentions this--once I can get my hands on it). Anyway that's just another example of how avoidance of using classifiers is something worthwhile to have mentioned in the article. rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:40, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
• should be explained, readers will not necessarily get abbreviations, especially in the introduction
  • I agree with this one. rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:43, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
• was non-sequitur and confused nouns with things
  • This change is good. rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:54, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
• it is not only a general classifier in this sense, for some nouns it is the "correct" classifier
  • I don't think this change is strictly necessary (saying 个 is the general classifier doesn't preclude it from also being the preferred classifier for some nouns), but it's also not problematic. rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:54, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
    • It may not logically preclude it, but an ordinary person reading it is likely to draw the wrong conclusion if it's not spelt out, I think. W. P. Uzer (talk) 15:07, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
• [6]
  • This version makes many other changes beyond those that were discussed. rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:54, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
    • And do you object to any of them? I was trying to make the whole structure of the explanation clearer, assuming that the reader doesn't know all these things already. Some things are not properly explained, probably because it has been written by experts to whom certain things are so obvious that they don't even come to mind. W. P. Uzer (talk) 15:07, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

I'd like to return to the matter of improving the "lede". Currently it still seems quite confused, for example, getting bogged down in unnecessary technical distinctions early on, giving an initial definition that is in fact empty of meaning and no real help to anyone (when in fact no definition is needed, since that is a matter for the articles on classifiers and measure words generally), omitting explanation of basic facts, not always maintaining a logical flow of ideas, etc. I'm working on an improved version in my sandbox here. It doesn't omit any of the information the lede currently contains (except, I think, the bit about morphemes and words, which is avoided here if the job of definition is delegated to those general articles). Comments and suggestions invited. W. P. Uzer (talk) 09:45, 20 September 2013 (UTC) User:W. P. Uzer/sandbox

It's going to take me some time to review this. rʨanaɢ (talk) 13:10, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Underlining

As has already been noted by me and at least one other person, underlining Chinese characters in the way that is done in this article is potentially confusing to people who don't know the characters well (the underlining may appear to be part of the character, possibly depending on browser). It was rather untruthfully stated above that this question has been "discussed at length" before (the links given don't lead to any substantial discussion of the matter). Why is it so important to you (Rjanag) to retain this underlining in spite of the issues it causes? Why not move the underlining (if we have to have it at all) to the pinyin? W. P. Uzer (talk) 19:30, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Any response to this suggestion? W. P. Uzer (talk) 12:44, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Quote: "underlining Chinese characters in the way that is done in this article is potentially confusing to people who don't know the characters well" - no it doesn't. Not once have people expressed such a problem. Anticipating that there might be a problem doesn't mean that one exists. The article makes it quite clear that the underlining has a purpose; if the reader is capable of reading, they would know that; if the reader is incapable of reading (e.g. diagnosed to be medically illiterate), they wouldn't be on Wikipedia. --benlisquare_T•C•E 12:05, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Not once, but twice have people expressed such a problem (in the previous discussion, and now me here). Not everyone who isn't "medically illiterate" (at least, on the English Wikipedia) can read Chinese fluently. If you recognize the characters, you probably don't need them underlined anyway, because you know which ones are the classifiers. But if you don't know about classifiers, and hence are reading this article to find out about them, it's quite likely that your knowledge of Chinese script will not be good enough to realize that 个 is 个 underlined and not a character that looks like 个. (That may not be so obvious on your browser as it is on mine.) W. P. Uzer (talk) 12:16, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Like I said, if a reader is mentally incapable of putting two and two together, and realise that there is a specific purpose behind the underlining, they wouldn't be looking up classifiers on Wikipedia. A reader would quite literally have to be of simple mind to not notice obvious patterns. This is a non-issue; nobody is going to mistaken the underlining as a part of the Chinese character. It isn't difficult for a five year old child to notice that there are matching colours, shapes and squiggles used throughout parts of the page, why does it make it any more different for an intellectually-capable adult who is interested in the topic, and hence willing to go out of their way to do a bit of research on it? This article uses colours for Chinese characters as well; are you going to argue that some readers would be confused and think that the green colour is a part of 这, and the purple colour is a part of 猫 as well? Because this is essentially what I'm gathering from your reasoning; that you'd expect readers to be incapable of putting two and two together like intellectual adults should. The article even uses a huge picture of File:Unicode4E2A.svg, just in case readers do get lost. Surely these readers don't need to be spoon-fed any more apple puree from the aeroplane spoon?

I get the feeling that you're going through a "row row fight da power" mood right now, since you're in disagreement with someone, and feel as if you don't need to step back. Think, for one second - if the problem really is as bad as you claim, then why wasn't it made a significant, pressing issue during the numerous promotion discussions on this article? Why have the large number of editors involved come up with a consensus to promote this article to whatever status hoops it has jumped through? If the underlining really was an issue like you claim it to be, this article would have never made it past those hoops and hurdles; there is strict criteria when it comes to things such as FA, including accessibility and all that, and this article would have immediately failed first hand. This article has had the support of those who find it a quality article; you're essentially jumping in out of nowhere a few years down the track, and saying "NOPE, can't have none of this!" despite all of that. In other words, you're all of a sudden telling everyone how to run the joint, and calling all the shots, like a new cowboy entering the saloon of a new town. --benlisquare_T•C•E 13:18, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

It's a relatively minor issue, it was raised before, it wasn't really settled, it obviously wasn't big enough to stop the article being promoted (as we've seen, there were a number of quite serious errors and omissions in the article that didn't stop it getting promoted either). Two people have experienced this problem (at least momentarily), we are not five-year-olds or mentally deficient as you seem to think, we just noticed something that you fluent Chinese readers didn't and wouldn't. And we are more like the people that the article is supposed to serve. Of course we worked out what was going on, as most people probably would, but what's the point of deliberately adopting a method that we know can cause problems, when there are other perfectly good methods that don't? What, to go back to my original suggestion, is the disadvantage of putting the underlining under the pinyin instead of the hanzi? And why the belligerence and insults towards someone who is only trying to make the article better? W. P. Uzer (talk) 13:39, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

What's a better method, that doesn't decrease the quality of information? Removing some form of marker is out of the question, since these markers (in our current case, the underlines) identify the classifier, and this is something important when explaining them. Something has to identify which character (not pinyin, character) is the classifier. Marking the reading only is a reduction of information quality, as it puts emphasis on the reading linked to the classifier, and not the classifier. All other alternatives (bold, italic, background colours, etc) are essentially a worse choice. I am personally happy with the underlining because I think it does the job very well, and not because I have a preconceived bias towards anything. --benlisquare_T•C•E 13:45, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

But you don't see it through the typical reader's eyes. The information quality is not good at present, because (well I've explained why). It doesn't affect you, because you read Chinese very well, but the article isn't for people like you (at least, that particular underlining isn't). You see the problem I hope - you're trying to say "hey, 个 is the classifier", but the message you're actually likely to convey is "there's some character in this that looks like 个". (The fact that there's a big picture of the 个 character is surely an argument against the need to additionally mark that character, but of course the issue applies to other classifiers besides 个.) Bolding or coloring would be better, I think (I don't think an English reader would misinterpret the intention of that so easily, and coloring is already used successfully in the Usage section). But the purpose would really be served by putting the marking (underlining say) on the pinyin. That way the reader will see more clearly where the classifier goes in relation to the other elements of the phrase, which is the important point. W. P. Uzer (talk) 14:00, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

That would require the assumption that the reader is able to make the link between the Chinese text and the pinyin reading associated with it. By relying on such an assumption, we're decreasing the information density provided. --benlisquare_T•C•E 14:09, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

I think anyone who can't make that link is more likely to be scanning the pinyin than the hanzi. Perhaps you think the underlining should be on both the hanzi and the pinyin (that would be a slight improvement in my opinion, though the problem remains). At the moment the underlining seems to be missing from the pinyin in most cases. W. P. Uzer (talk) 14:19, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

To clarify on alternatives (because outright removal of markers is a bad compromise that I'd strongly recommend against), what other choices do we have? What choices give a better outcome than underlining? Take colour usage for example:

這是一個例子，用來表達一些東西。

Sure, now the "underline might look like part of the character" problem has been alleviated, but now it opens a new can of worms: being too darn flashy and annoying. We are discouraged from having text being too much of an eyesore in general on Wikipedia. Italic text for 中文汉字 should never be used just out of aesthetic horribleness (I think the MOS even discourages/prevents using italics for Chinese characters), and bold text like in 中文汉字 likewise has its problems. --benlisquare_T•C•E 14:05, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

To me the coloring is better. It's a technique that is already used in a prominent section of the article, to good effect. Perhaps with foreground rather than background coloring. OK, it doesn't "look better", but it doesn't look much worse, and it avoids the original issue raised, which is more than simply an esthetic one. W. P. Uzer (talk) 14:12, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

I'll leave that up to Rjanag, and any other editors who wish to say something. I think that it's too flashy for an article (borderline Template:Overcolored material). --benlisquare_T•C•E 14:19, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

I've been wondering if it's technically possible to have colored underlining, without coloring the characters themselves. Anyone know? (I also asked at WP:Village pump (technical).) W. P. Uzer (talk) 06:48, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Specific link to Village Pump thread: WP:VPT#Colored_underlining.    DKqwerty    07:42, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Well, I got a very rapid response there, and it turns out it is possible. The examples provided were foo and bar. In our examples it would look something like:

• 一个人 (yí ge rén, one-CL person), or
• 一个人 (yíge rén, one-CL person).

(Of course, different colors would be possible.) What do we think about those? To me the second version (with single underlining) is still not clear (the color isn't visible enough), but the version with solid underlining is ideal. It may also be possible to do it with double underlining. (I assume from the template name "du" that double underlining is currently the intended behavior, though what you actually get seems to depend on your browser configuration.) W. P. Uzer (talk) 07:43, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

The reason it's called {{du}} is because its default behavior is to make two underlines. But when it's wrapped in a {{lang|zh}} template, then it shows up as a thick underline (at least on every browser I had tried it with at the time we implemented this, although apparently with your current version of IE it's not doing that). rʨanaɢ (talk) 10:42, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

? If I understand that right, it implies to me that in all your browsers, you're seeing different versions of the underlining in the Chinese text (which is wrapped in template zh) and in the pinyin and glosses (which is not). That surely isn't a good thing, as it loses the visible connection that I thought was the whole point of the underlining in the first place. W. P. Uzer (talk) 14:36, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, they are appearing differently. That's the whole reason the pinyin wasn't underlined (until you started adding those). rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:42, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

So I no longer see what on earth is the point of the underlining, if it actually fails to make the visual link successfully between the "个" and the "CL". W. P. Uzer (talk) 14:57, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

This looks alright to me. I'd be happy to support this. As for which exact colour(s) to pick, we can decide on it later. --benlisquare_T•C•E 08:06, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

I haven't had time to read all of this yet. But a quick comment: using different colors is probably not a good solution, because of WP:ACCESS issues. I'm already not 100% comfortable with the use of different colors in the big table. rʨanaɢ (talk) 10:31, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't see any relevance of accessibility issues here. Presumably someone who doesn't see the colors will still see the underlining; in other words, it won't be any worse for such people than it is now. But for the rest, probably the majority, it will be better, in that it would be likely to avoid the potential confusion referred to above (and related confusion that came up at the village pump thread). WP:ACCESS says basically that colors should not be the only way of conveying information, not that colors should not be used per se. W. P. Uzer (talk) 14:30, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

So how does this look (I've created a very basic Template:Csu to provide the colored solid underlining):

• 一个人 (yí ge rén, one-CL person

This has the Chinese characters encased in the lang|zh template as mentioned above. Is everyone seeing consistent and visually tolerable underlining on their browsers? W. P. Uzer (talk) 06:55, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

It looks fine to me, but if you're going to start replacing stuff you need to make sure you do it consistently, across all the examples through the entire article. Consistency is something that was lacking in your earlier revisions, where you made wholesale changes to one or two sections and left the rest of the article inconsistent. rʨanaɢ (talk) 13:09, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

it doesn't work with my screen reader. Frietjes (talk) 21:38, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Does the current formatting work with your screen reader? What are the differences in its reactions? W. P. Uzer (talk) 09:17, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

I've just been replacing the old "du" with "csu", and in the process making the presentation of the examples a bit more consistent than they were. How does it look? Any screen reader problems that weren't there before? I suggest that further formatting tweaks be made by editing the Template:Csu. For example, it may be possible to change the color of the underline or even go back to black, if the color is found to be too glaring (it jars a bit at first, I admit, but I think it's something our eyes would soon get used to). W. P. Uzer (talk) 09:32, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Section on exceptions

How can we give a full and understandable account of the use of classifiers if we don't give at least a bit of detail (which the one sentence to which the section is claimed to have been "condensed" certainly fails to do) about the situations in which they are NOT used (but in which, based on the account given, anyone who didn't know the topic would expect them to be used)? It would be like having an article on English articles that stated that every noun is preceded by an article (with a vague indication that some exceptions exist), without addressing any of those exceptions. I know all this is obvious to some of you, but to others it is not, and it needs explaining. You can do a much fuller job of the explanation than I can, but if you don't have time at the moment, then at least allow what information I can provide to remain available (or correct any errors if you think there are any). It doesn't need to be a separate section (though I think ultimately it should be), but the basic information about the "ten yuan" type of phrase, and about the "one country two systems" type (what's going on there?), with examples, needs to follow on fairly soon after the initial exposition of usage (which is excellent). W. P. Uzer (talk) 06:47, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a usage guide or an aggregator of personal anecdotes about usage. As I have already stated here, off the top of my head I don't know of sources that discuss classifier-dropping in colloquial speech (the kind like “这人很X”), so there's not much that I can say about it other than that it happens.

Regarding the 十元 example, I have already explained that this is incorrect (at least under the analyses that I am aware of). 元 in this context is not a noun, it is a classifier, so this is simply not an example of a noun phrase lacking a classifier. For comparison, think of an example like “你买苹果了吗？” “嗯，我买了五个”. "五个" in that example is certainly not an example of a noun phrase missing a classifier; it's a full DP where the noun (not the classifier!) has been elided. The same goes for the 十元 example. Maybe there are other approaches which don't agree here, and which treat 元 in 十元 as a noun rather than a classifier, but I have never seen them. So this example is not really relevant.

Beyond that, what is there left to say? I have already added a sentence to the article saying that classifiers are sometimes not used in solidified idioms and in colloquial speech. These things are pretty straightforward and are nearly self-evident anyway. (English idioms don't always follow modern grammar either; this is just basic knowledge about how idioms work. An article about English grammar doesn't need a lengthy exposition about the idiom "long time no see"; the fact that it's an idiom and doesn't follow the usual rules is pretty much all that needs to be said, if anything.) So I really don't know what more you want added. rʨanaɢ (talk) 10:28, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Well, to start with, an explanation of what's going on with 十元. In the version that you removed, it was clearly stated that 元 can be analyzed as a classifier rather than as a noun. But someone reading the article as you've written it WON'T KNOW THAT. They would think that "ten yuan" and other such phrases consist of a numeral plus a noun, and therefore that a classifier ought to be inserted between them. How the sources analyze them is not especially relevant; the relevant thing is that what you've just written is going to imply to any non-Chinese-speaking reader that a whole class of phrases ought to be formed grammatically in a way that they are not. One way or another, this needs explanation. As far as I can tell, the explanation that you removed (claiming it to be "incorrect") is exactly the same as the explanation you've now given above! Perhaps (almost certainly) you can write the explanation better and more fully than I can. But by yet again removing it completely, you restore the article to its previous misleading state. It's incomprehensible to me why you should want to deprive learners of this bit of information, which concerns a very basic type of phrase. W. P. Uzer (talk) 14:15, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

The way you had it written, it seems you were suggesting this as an example of a Number+Noun phrase that doesn't have a classifier, and this is just not true if 元 is not a noun. So 十元 is not "with no classifier", as your addition to the article claimed.

I daresay if a reader doesn't speak Chinese (like the readers you are concerned about), she is not going to magically think up this apparent counterexample in the first place, so this addition seems more like an article-space equivalent of WP:BEANS territory.

Anyway, a discussion of every Number+Classifier phrase ever used is beyond the scope of this article. I don't really see what sets 十元 apart from the example I gave above, or indeed any other example of a DP with an elided noun. I just don't see what's encyclopedic about these. (They're not even unique to Chinese. We do the same thing in English: ["Did you buy apples?" "I bought five."]; "ten dollars" instead of "ten dollars' worth of money".) rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:41, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, and in English, when we say "ten dollars", we think "dollars" is a NOUN! So someone learning Chinese will think that "yuan" is a noun, similarly! And such a learner will of course not think up the counterexample - they will either be given such a counterexample by their teacher or textbook and wonder why there's no classifier, or they will deduce from the general explanation that they should translate "ten yuan" by saying shi ge yuan or something like that. What we need to explain and illustrate is, to put it another way, that there is a group of words that you would almost certainly think are nouns, but are in fact classifiers. W. P. Uzer (talk) 14:54, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Why would you think "dollar" in "ten dollars" is a noun? Someone saying "I have ten dollars" is not saying they have ten separate things (like they would be if they said they had ten cats), they are saying an amount of one thing (money) that they have. Just like if someone, asked how much water they had, said "ten gallons". "Gallon" is not a noun, either. rʨanaɢ (talk) 15:01, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

No, I don't think people think in that way about nouns in English. I'm going to go to the language help desk to find out for sure, but I reckon at least 90% of linguists and 90% of educated people would say that "dollar" and "gallon" are nouns in such phrases. W. P. Uzer (talk) 15:07, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Also, this is something I found quite quickly on Google Books. This author certainly refers to "quasi-measures" as being "nouns", and considers the topic deserving of exposition even in a fairly elementary textbook. W. P. Uzer (talk) 15:39, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

But Wikipedia is not a textbook. And as a general rule, I usually don't consider introductory textbooks to be good sources except for as examples of what's in introductory textbooks. rʨanaɢ (talk) 16:34, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, and it's in that spirit that I mention it here - the point is (and I really think this was obvious enough from the start) is that people (I mean likely readers of English Wikipedia, and of this article in particular) are going to expect the class "nouns" to include the words for such concepts as dollars and hours and gallons and meters and so on. That's because everybody knows those words to be nouns in English (even if in your personal opinion they shouldn't be so categorized). The fact that textbook authors are happy to refer to even the equivalent Chinese words as nouns is just more evidence of the same fact. We don't have to follow the textbook by saying that they "are" nouns in Chinese, but we should mention specifically that words of this type (you will know better than I exactly what words are of "this type") behave in Chinese like measure words rather than like ordinary nouns (in particular, they don't require an additional classifier when being counted). If we don't say that, then readers, however linguistically sophisticated or not, will have no possible way of knowing that this is the case, based on the account given at present. This might also be cross-referenced in some way with the "measurement units" section of List of Chinese classifiers, which currently lacks any explanation. W. P. Uzer (talk) 07:36, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Well, no classifier ever requires an additional classifier, so I don't see the point of singling out these ones. rʨanaɢ (talk) 08:55, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

As I'm constantly explaining, "these ones" need singling out because they appear (to the uninitiated, i.e. the people we are writing for) to be nouns; people won't know that they behave as classifiers rather than nouns unless we tell them. W. P. Uzer (talk) 13:15, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

For what it's worth, Li & Thompson's Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar, p.105ff., after presenting prototypical classifyer NPs (such as 三个人 or 几件衣服) go on to discuss a class of "measure words" that act both as nouns and as classifiers, in these words:

"If the noun itself denotes a measure, it does not take a classifier [...]"

[citing examples such as "三天", "八块"]

"In fact, not only does a measure word generally not take a classifier, but any measure word can be a classifier [...]"

[citing examples such as "十磅" vs. "十磅肉"]

"[...] Measure words can also indicate aggregates or containers [...]"

Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:10, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

On a second look, I notice that these issues are already treated in the section on "count-classifiers and mass-classifiers" ("Like other classifiers, these can also stand without a noun [...]"), so I'm not sure why we would also add a treatment in the "usage" section the way W. P. Uzer proposed. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:12, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Because it's most relevant to usage - people wondering how to form basic noun/classifier phrases are unlikely to scan down to the middle of a long section on linguistic terminology to find out about what for them would look to be exceptions (and pretty basic ones) from the rules that have been stated. Also the part about "measurement units" makes no mention of currency units and certain other words that you wouldn't really expect to be in that category but are. In fact I think there ought to be a section giving a basic overview of types of classfier before (or at the start of) the usage section, so that when people reach the syntactic description they already basically know what kind of words are counted as "nouns" and what kind are counted as "classifiers" for the purposes of that description. W. P. Uzer (talk) 06:43, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm no linguist, just chiming in from the ref desk. Anyway, I would side with W.P. Uzer here. My belief is that, to anyone who hasn't had at least a few upper-level undergrad linguistics courses, "dollar" is definitely and simply a noun in Enlgish. I take the point that WP is not a textbook, but we should still strive to make our information clear, and take a general audience into account. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:23, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

I think the section that Future Perfect mentioned solves this issue. Thanks for catching that! rʨanaɢ (talk) 13:07, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

As I pointed out, though, it doesn't really. Firstly it doesn't give a full description of the category or its consequences, and secondly it won't be noticed by people reading the bit about usage - as is evidenced by the fact that it wasn't noticed by us all this time. W. P. Uzer (talk) 14:50, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Another thing I've seen stated in a couple of books is that while classifiers may be "compulsory" after numerals, they are merely optional after demonstratives. Does this accord with your practical experience? W. P. Uzer (talk) 14:57, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

That's the example I've been giving about colloquial usage (这人很过分). If you've found it mentioned in a source that would be useful, as right now it's "citation needed" in the article. rʨanaɢ (talk) 16:45, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

In Chaofen Sun's "Chinese: A Linguistic Introduction" (which I've also been citing lately in the Chinese grammar article, incidentally), p. 159-160, it states that one can say na pi ma or simply na ma for "that horse" (but not na yi ma, since the numeral, unlike the demonstrative, requires the classifier). It is also noted that the noun phrase can begin with the classifier, as in mai pi ma for "buy a horse". Doesn't say anything about any of these being exclusively colloquial - do you feel some of them are? Or do you think even yi ma without the classifier might be found colloquially? W. P. Uzer (talk) 17:36, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Verb + Classifier + Noun (e.g. 买匹马，洗个脸) is pretty common, it conveys some indefiniteness (as opposed to e.g. 买一匹马, which sounds more like it's describing a specific event of buying a specific horse) while still talking about an event rather than a general activity (i.e., it's different from 买马, which in many contexts would sound more like horse-buying in general). But this is all getting into rather specific usage trivia that I think is beyond the scope of encyclopedia article, and I don't know what can be said in the article that wouldn't be undue weight. (see also WP:NOT#DICT).

This is starting to get to the point where my intuitions (as a non-native speaker) are not very meaningful anymore, but most examples of these phrases without a classifier that I have heard are with 人. "那马" sounds more marked to me than "这人...". 一马 is totally unacceptable to me, even colloquially; the only place where I've seen something like that is 一人, which is not actually a noun phrase, it's an adverb meaning "alone" (short for 一个人). rʨanaɢ (talk) 20:39, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't think this is trivial at all - this is exactly the sort of thing that people want to know (whether language learners or interested linguistic theoreticians), and is unlikely to be found in a normal dictionary. We should certainly mention these various possible constructions in the article, particularly the one where the classifier is the sole modifier of the noun, since the article at the moment gives no indication that such a thing is possible. In fact, it's starting to look less and less reasonable to claim that they are "bound morphemes" - I intend to remove that sentence from the introduction, since it's misleading both as it is now and as it was originally. W. P. Uzer (talk) 07:18, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Every language has thousands of different constructions which might have some connotations or other. It is far beyond the scope of an encyclopedia to cover the connotations and preconditions of usage for every possible permutation of words that we can think of. A mere list of every classifier construction you can think of would not be an encyclopedic treatment of the topic; it would be a usage guide or list. rʨanaɢ (talk) 13:00, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm not talking about thousands, just a few. If you include some usages and not others, you mislead people into thinking that these are the only typical usages. Also, I now see you've once again (this is starting to look like an obsession) removed the information about units from the usage section. Why??? Who are you trying to help or deceive by preventing readers from finding out that they don't need a classifier when they say 10 yuan and such like - which are very basic phrases? W. P. Uzer (talk) 13:10, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

As I have explained several times, they do need a classifier, 元 is a classifier. I still do not see what point this example is supposed to illustrate.

Talking about "deceiving" people and "denying" information is really not constructive. Unless you really think I'm part of some evil conspiracy to take over the world by depriving poor students of the information they need, language like "who are you trying to help or deceive by preventing readers..." smacks of conspiracy theory and is not helpful. There is no cabal. rʨanaɢ (talk) 13:21, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

But we've been through this over and over, you must SURELY understand the point by now. Once again: Anyone reading the section on usage (who doesn't know Chinese) is going to conclude from it that phrases like "ten yuan" (which are basic everyday phrases, far more so than phrases like "these five head of cattle" which are listed in that section already) are to be formed with an (additional - I wrote additional in the text that you removed) classifier before the "yuan". They are not. I simply want to let people know this extra important fact, and tell them where to find further information about it. What is your possible objection? We've found sources that say that these classifiers are also nouns, which was your previous demand, and shown that your claim that people wouldn't think of these things as nouns to be nonsense, I've answered the objections of you and FuturePerfect that the material is covered already - what further objection do you have?? W. P. Uzer (talk) 13:32, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

sources

• Tang, C.-C. J. (2007). Modifier licensing and Chinese DP: A feature analysis. Language and Linguistics, 8(4), 967-1024.

This article might have some discussion of demonstrative + noun phrases without classifiers (e.g. 这人). I haven't gotten access to it yet.

• http://www.degruyter.com/view/product/183465

This book mentions idiomatic expressions where classifiers aren't used, so could be a source for that statement. I've forgotten the page number but can try to find it again.

I haven't had time yet to look at the other discussion issues above. rʨanaɢ (talk) 09:38, 9 October 2013 (UTC)