Fw: [Lexicog] Measure words

[Tommaso Pellin]

Dear Dr. Muhammad-Reza Fakhr-Rohani,

sorry for the late reply.

> Indeed there are such words in Mazandarani. For example, "y3 s3sk3 nun" vs. "y3 Rade nun", both of  which mean "some piece of bread".[1] In the same fashion as you noted, there is a change of meaning. 

Could you please explain which the change of meaning is? I am so interested in this sort of things...

>But, have you checked  some English dictionaries for a > list of such 'measure' words in English? 

No, actually I didn't yet. But I don't know if English classifiers are completely comparable to Chinese ones. From all the examples I have read from the precious suggestions the collegues lexicographers have provided so far, I understand that Chinese, besides these "group" classifiers, has also something different. In fact, all the classifiers I have seen here are collective; in Chinese there are also - how can I explain it? - "unit classifiers", classifiers which identify a specific class of things and can be also used with just one of those things. So to say "one cat" (not a group of cats, or a strange type of cats), I say yi1 zhi1 mao1; for "one horse", I say yi1 pi3 ma3, with zhi1 classifier for animals and pi3 classifier for horses, donkeys, mules (probably also camels and dromedaries), etc. 

> By the way, are you aware of any dictionary of such words, with one side in English? And, do you know of any scheme or list of procedures for collecting such words?

I think there are some Chinese-English dictionaries for Chinese classifiers (for instance the Dictionary of Chinese Classifiers.  Torrance, CA: Heian International Publishing, Incorporated, 1989); in Chinese there are many of them, because they are so important. In fact, nearly every word has its own classifier! But I don't know exactly how the lexicographers of such dictionaries collect them, if they have some special procedure to follow... Anyway I am sure it is very hard because very often nouns can also serve as classifiers!

> I appreciate your prompn reply and hope to hear from you soon.

Sincerely,

Tommaso



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 s poons), 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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