On the interpretation of number and classifiers

Abstract

Mandarin and Cantonese, both of which are numeral classifier languages, present an interesting puzzle concerning a compositional account of number in the various forms of nominals. First, bare nouns are number neutral (or vague in number). Second, cl-noun combinations appear to have different interpretations depending on contexts. When they occur in isolation (bare clnoun), they can only be interpreted as singular. When they occur with numerals above one, or with expressions such as hěn duō/hou2 do1 ‘a lot’ they are interpreted as plural. This paper discusses the relevant data, as well as three potential solutions to this puzzle. In section 1, we present a brief overview of the basic data in both Cantonese and Mandarin, including the co-occurrence of measure words such as hěn duō/hou2 do1 ‘a lot’ and classifiers. In section 2, we discuss the interpretation and syntactic status of the elements di1 (Cantonese) and xiē (Mandarin), which we argue to be a special type of classifiers (contra Iljic 1994). We present three potential analyses to explain the shift in number in Chinese nominals in section 3, and we show that though we can rule out one analysis, further study is needed to determine whether one of the remaining analyses is correct.