Beyond one, two, three: Number matters in classifier languages

Abstract

Chinese has been widely recognised as a classic example of a numeral-licensing classifier language, where the presence of a classifier is obligatory for overt quantification of nouns. This paper presents new data from Mandarin and Hong Kong Cantonese (HKC) to show that the need of classifiers for quantification is not always that absolute. Systematic variation has been found with an extended range of numerals examined (numerals larger than three), and a wider coverage of nouns in terms of animacy. The findings present a consistent pattern that HKC has a stricter requirement for classifiers in enumeration as bare common nouns are not definite in HKC, and it lacks the alternative strategies found in Mandarin.