Classifiers and DP

Wu and Bodomo (2009) argue against claims made in Cheng and Sybesma 1999. Gebhardt (2011) has contested their arguments related to the status of classifiers and the question whether all nouns in Chinese are mass. In this reply, we discuss some of the points Wu and Bodomo raise, arguing that (a) sort...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Linguistic inquiry 2012-10, Vol.43 (4), p.634-650
Main Authors: Cheng, Lisa Lai-Shen, Sybesma, Rint
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Chinese
classifiers
Definite articles
Definiteness
Descriptive studies and applied theories
Language
Linguistics
Noun phrases
Nouns
Numerals
Phrase structure
Phrases
Predicates
Remarks and Replies
Semantics
Syntax
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Summary:Wu and Bodomo (2009) argue against claims made in Cheng and Sybesma 1999. Gebhardt (2011) has contested their arguments related to the status of classifiers and the question whether all nouns in Chinese are mass. In this reply, we discuss some of the points Wu and Bodomo raise, arguing that (a) sortal classifiers are not lexical elements; (b) generic interpretation is not the same as kind interpretation; (c) demonstrative noun phrases do not have the same distribution and interpretation as definite noun phrases in Mandarin and Cantonese; and (d) the DP structure that Wu and Bodomo propose runs into serious problems with phrasal possessors. Finally, we discuss an alternative approach to the structure of the nominal domain in Chinese languages.
ISSN:0024-3892
1530-9150
DOI:10.1162/ling_a_00109