Fw: [Lexicog] Measure words

[Kenneth C. Hill]

What Tommaso is interested in is covered under the label "classifiers" in
the linguistics literature. I suspect a internet search with that label
would prove useful.

--Ken

--- Tommaso Pellin <tommaso.pellin at unive.it> wrote:
> Dear Muhammad-Reza Fakhr-Rohani,
>
>  A measure word, at least in Mandarin Chinese, is in fact something like
> "kilo", "meter", and similar measurement units. But while in such
> languages as English, apart from the cases in which "kilo" or "meter" or
> else is used, usually nouns do not need any measurement unit (in English
> we say "a person", two tables, three knives"), in Mandarin Chinese they
> do (so we have yi1 ge ren2 "one unit of people", liang3 zhang1 zhuo1zi
> "two units of tables" and san1 ba3 dao1 "three units of knives"). The
> thing which renders learning them even harder is that there exist many
> measure words, according to a number of classes of words. So we have the
> ample and
> > thin things which use the measure word "zhang1" (like for the tables,
> or leaves of paper, or tickets, or photographs), the handled things
> which use "ba3" (as the knives, the forks, the spoons), and so on. Every
> measure word has its own meaning so to use one instead of another
> changes radically the meaning of a syntagm (for instance, yi1 zhi1 hua1
> means "one flower", because it is used the measure word "zhi1", which is
> for thin and round-sectioned things like the stalk of the flower, but
> yi1 ba3 hua1 means "a bunch of flowers" because "ba3" which is roughly
> "handful" is used).
>
> I hope my explanation is clear, and invite the collegues to correct it.
>
> Is there anything similar in Mazandarani?
>
> Thanks
>
>  Tommaso
>
>
> > Dear Prof. Tommaso Pellin,
> >  Thanks for your interesting message.  What do you precisely mean by
> > 'measure words'? Do you mean such words as 'kilo', 'meter', and so on?
> > If so, I can help you with some such words from Mazandarani, a
> > less-studied Iranian language. Will it help you?   And, do you think
> the
> > size of such words will be enough for devoting a dictionary to them?
> >  Write me soon.
> > Sincerely,
> > Dr. Muhammad-Reza Fakhr-Rohani
> > dr_fakhr_rohani at yahoo.com
> >
> > Tommaso Pellin <tommaso.pellin at unive.it> wrote:
> > Dear lexicographers,
> >
> > is there anyone who has some experience in Chinese measure words or in
> > measure words in any other kind of language? Could you give me some
> advice
> > about preparing a dictionary of measure words? Could you suggest some
> good
> > dictionary to take as an example (I am going to write a
> Chinese-Italian
> > dictionary of measure words)?
> >
> > Thank you
> >
> > Tommaso Pellin


		
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