[Lexicog] Measure words

[Michael Patrick O'Connor]

Folks

>>>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.

These may be called in English determiners or determinatives; that might
help the search for material on them.

Michael Patrick O'Connor
pandary at starpower.net




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