| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 語言學研究所 === 101 === The relationship between numeral classifiers and number plurals has been examined by several linguists (Greenberg 1972, Sanches&; Slobin 1973, Chierchia 1998, and T’suo1976, Borer 2005 and Her 2012a). They found that it is a universal property that classifiers and plurals are in complementary distribution. Borer (2005) and Her (2012a) further proposed that classifiers and plurals are the same category. However, classifiers and plurals can co-occur at least in 22 languages, according to a surveye by Gil (2008) and Haspelmath (2008). The aim of this study is to find out the relationship between classifiers and plurals in these 22 languages. After the analysis of data, the results show that classifiers and plurals are in complementary distribution in their usage, but not in cases of co-occurrence. The possible reasons for the co-occurrence may be language contact or language change. Thus, to account for the co-occurrence in the 22 languages, syntactic structure of classifiers and plurals may be co-head structure. Most languages tend to have either classifier system or plural system because they are the same category. But the co-occurrences are also reasonable since they are co-head.
|
|---|
