Fw: [Lexicog] Measure words

[Tommaso Pellin]

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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