Why there is no '个' in this sentence: 这孩子像他爸爸。?

[skylee]

@davoosh's example sentences all look informal to me.

Really? How odd. Perhaps we should define "formal" and "informal".

[Demonic_Duck]

By "informal", I mean "not formal". I'll admit that's perhaps too wide of a definition, so I should perhaps reword "informal" to "not particularly formal".

 

Incidentally, my "native speaking better half" agrees with me (that none of the sentences are particularly formal, and that in every case adding a classifier would make it more formal). She did, however, say that the difference in formality from classifier use and non-use isn't particularly large.

[陳德聰]

I think that I actually associate more of a "formal" feeling with constructions that are more likely to appear in writing than they are in speech, but that doesn't mean that all writing is formal and all speech is informal, and in this particular case... I don't think I would say the examples produced by davoosh in a formal speech, but I don't think I would find myself saying them that way at all, as I tend toward classifier over no-classifier most of the time. I'm sure there must be some sort of style guide somewhere that postulates an arbitrary rule here, but I'm inclined to believe it's likely an issue of variation between individuals and their preference.

[H. Harroty]

Classifiers coming after demonstrative pronouns ("这" or "那") are always optional, no matter whether formal or informal.

[Johnny20270]

Language isn't about reducing your words to the absolute minimum required for understanding - and in fact would be quite boring if it was.

 

 

Did you ever read Orwell's 1984?   Sometimes I wish they would introduce "newspeak" to Chinese language, make my life a lot easier!    but boring as you say...

 

 

Classifiers coming after demonstrative pronouns ("这" or "那") are always optional, no matter whether formal or informal.

 

 

Really? OK now I am confused!  I thought they were always required

 

Yip Po Chings grammar book "Basic Chinese Grammar", page 11 states they are required unless I am misinterpreting what he is writing. 

[roddy]

It's 'Basic', and there's a limited amount of space (and classroom time, and amount the poor Chinese 101 student's brain can cope with). This is fairly obscure stuff (I can't find it mentioned in any other grammar I have bar the one I quoted earlier), and not teaching it to a student won't have much in the way of negative consequences - you won't go wrong using the measure word all the time, and when you see or hear something without it you'll suffer momentary confusion at worst, and may even be inspired to post in the Internet. 

[陳德聰]

I don't think they're always optional. I think they fit different situations. Yeah the classifier-on version and the classifier-off version of a noun phrase both exist for everything, but that doesn't mean they're interchangeable in every situation, which is what I feel like calling it "optional" evokes.

[Demonic_Duck]

Did you ever read Orwell's 1984?   Sometimes I wish they would introduce "newspeak" to Chinese language, make my life a lot easier!    but boring as you say...

I don't think newspeak is a model language that's optimised for clarity and conciseness - many of the words are designed to be deliberately euphemistic or misleading, and words like "doubleplusungood" are far from concise.