[Lexicog] Dictionary of a language with classifiers

[Ron Moe]

Kim and I took our discussion offline, since it was getting lengthy and
required a lot of clarification. However there are still some outstanding
questions that I think others might be interested in.

Back in May two people on this list recommended the following book:

Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2000. Classifiers: A Typology of Noun
Categorization Devices. Oxford Studies in Typology and Linguistic Theory.
Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-926466-X

I haven't read it and need to, because I find that the topic is far more
complex than I originally thought. I've identified the following issues that
I find rather fascinating from both a theoretical and practical standpoint:

1. How do they function morpho-syntactically?
1a. Are they roots, affixes, or a mixture of both?
1b. Are they obligatory?
1c. Do they only occur in certain types of constructions (e.g. only with
numerals as in Japanese)?
1d. Is there concordial agreement with modifying adjectives and/or verbs?

2. How do they function semantically?
2a. Is there a clear meaning or do they merely place the noun is a syntactic
class? (Indo-European gender usually correlates with sex in animate nouns,
but otherwise there is very little, if any, semantic correlation.)
2a. Do they reflect a very general set of semantic categories (e.g. human vs
non-human, animate vs non-animate), or are they more specific (e.g. round in
shape vs flat in shape)?
2b. Do they have a dual function semantically, as in the English set 'flock,
herd, pack', which refer to 'a group of (animals)' as well as classifying
the type of animal?
2c. Do they change the semantics of the nouns, like a derivational affix, or
do they merely reflect the semantic class of the noun?
2d. Are the classifiers polysemous? In other words can they be used with two
distinct classes of nouns?

3. How are they handled in a dictionary?
3a. Are they entered as main entries, sub-entries, or lexical relations?
3b. How is their syntactic function indicated? For instance, do they require
a separate part of speech?
3c. If they affect or reflect the semantics of the noun, how is this
indicated?

I would imagine that there are a lot more issues than this.

Ron Moe

-----Original Message-----
From: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
[mailto:lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com]On Behalf Of Mike Maxwell
Sent: Thursday, June 16, 2005 8:49 AM
To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Lexicog] Dictionary of a language with classifiers


Ron Moe wrote:
> You mention that your classifiers overlap with roots. In that way they
> are more like the English 'head' than the Japanese '-mai'.

In Tucanoan languages (same part of the world as Kim's language, but a
different language family), there is also an overlap of roots and
suffixes for noun classifiers: some classifiers are clearly affixal,
whereas others are clearly roots, and can appear alone as nouns.

Not all nouns need to take these classifiers: in particular, those nouns
that also serve as classifiers do not themselves take classifiers.
Also, abstract nouns don't take classifiers.

Some classifiers also act as nominalizers on verbs.

Finally, there are (semantically-based) gender markers, which function
much the same as classifiers, but on human (or other animate) nouns.

(I've based the above on Cubeo, the Tucanoan language that I'm most
familiar with; details may vary for other Tucanoan languages.)

BTW, these are definitely noun classifiers in Tucanoan languages, not
numeral classifiers as are found in Mayan languages (and, IIUC, Japanese).

--
	Mike Maxwell
	Linguistic Data Consortium
	maxwell at ldc.upenn.edu

	"When I get a little money I buy books;
           and if any is left I buy food and clothes."
	--Erasmus



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