This chapter introduces the unique parts of speech of measure words (classifiers) in Chinese, with a focus on the grammatical usages of measure words to count nouns. The various functions of different types of measure words in sentences are discussed.

This chapter addresses the motivation for the emergence of classifiers. Before Middle Chinese, there was no such category as “classifier” in the grammar of the Chinese language, and this word “classifier” was historically innovated. Individual classifiers started to emerge as early as Late Old Chinese, and the number of classifiers steadily increased over time. However, the rigorous grammatical rule that required a proper classifier for every numeral phrase was firmly established around the fourteenth century AD. Importantly, there was a parallel development of nominal and verbal classifiers; that is, verbal classifiers came into existence not long after the emergence of nominal classifiers.

This chapter demonstrates that the demonstratives zhè and gè in Mandarin Chinese and its dialects were grammaticalized from two general classifiers in late Middle Chinese, both of which originated from ordinary nouns. Based on diachronic facts and dialectal data, the present analysis addresses the motivation and mechanism for the course of development from classifiers to demonstratives. This finding may make a significant contribution to historical linguistics.

This chapter discusses changes in pronominal systems throughout history and explores the motivations for the emergence of plurals and diminutives in Modern Chinese. The emergence of the plural morpheme was motivated by the classifier system; the distribution of the plural morphemes was also influenced by classifiers. The earliest uses of these plurals were attested around the eighth century AD, but their widespread use occurred after the tenth century AD.

This chapter analyses the causal relationship between the establishment of the classifier system and the grammaticalization of the morphosyntactic particle de in the history of the Chinese language. It demonstrates that the grammaticalization of a lexical item is subject to the influence of the overall structural change of a language in a particular time period.

In the rule-combining approach to morphotactics, the same rules may compose in more than one way to express more than one content. Strikingly, Murrinhpatha verb inflection allows the same rules to compose in the same linear order but in different binary groupings to express distinct content. As a consequence of this fact, Murrinhpatha verb forms exhibit a systematic pattern of ambiguity, as illustrated by pubamngankungkardungime (loosely, ‘they saw us’), in which the paucal nonsibling female suffix -ngime may relate to the verb’s object (allowing the interpretation ‘those two siblings saw us (paucal nonsibling females)’) or to its subject (allowing the interpretation ‘they (paucal nonsibling females) saw us two siblings’). As I show, this ambiguity follows from the Category Determination Principle, according to which a rule whose morphosyntactic content is ambiguous is disambiguated by the first rule with which it composes. I give a detailed demonstration that Murrinhpatha verb inflection exploits this fact.

This chapter aims to provide a careful examination of Mandarin Chinese classifiers from a syntactic perspective. A comprehensive overview of the distribution of classifiers is provided along with their syntactic analyses. A central conclusion of this chapter, following much recent work, is that there are two distinct structural configurations that numeral classifiers participate in, and that these structures can distinguish the type of classifier participating in the structure as well as its semantic interpretation. The syntactic analyses are complemented with formal semantic analyses of numeral classifiers.

Modifiers come in a wide range of semantic types. The prototypical modifiers, property concepts, sort the referents of the noun category into subcategories. Numerals, quantifiers, set-member modifiers (‘next,’ ‘last,’ ordinals), and mensural terms function to select an individual, a set of individuals, or an amount of a nonindividuated object. Nominal modifiers use another referent to situate the head referent, most commonly via relations of possession or location. Modification constructions use a variety of strategies to express the modifier--head referent relation, strategies that are used in many other relations within a construction. Simple strategies do not use any other morphemes to encode the relation, and include juxtaposition and compounding. Relational strategies encode the semantic relation between modifier and referent (more generally, dependent and head), and include adpositions and case affixes. Indexical strategies index a referent, either the head referent or the nominal dependent referent, and include most classifiers. The sources of these strategies are constructions with pronouns, nouns, or verbs; and the strategies may evolve into a linker.