Measure words origin ?

[boctulus]

Hi!

 

     I can't find any explanation about the origin (history) of classifiers in chinese or sino-tibetan languages.

 

Why measure words ? 

Why are they needed? 

Why the need of measure words arose ? 

Why measure words exists in not genetically-related asian-language as japanese ?

[querido]

Examine their use in English. When must we specify "a slice of" instead of just "pie"?

English is different from Chinese in that the measure is so often left unstated, but it is still implied.

[boctulus]

 

Examine their use in English. When must we specify "a slice of" instead of just "pie"? English is different from Chinese in that the measure is so often left unstated, but it is still implied.

 

@querido: I think It's completely different in my unqualified opinion.

 

In english you said "a slice of pie" because you are specifying just a "fraction" of a pie, not the whole.  

 

Another example in english is "cup" in "one-cup coffee/tea/wine" but it's the same case because "one wine" could imply the bottle of wine.  So... you need do be specific with bottle/cup.

 

But "one dog-animal"  ?

 

 

BTW:

 

In english also, to give another example, farmers used to say "head of cattle" but the term is not usually used and "one cow" is prefered (there is no plus in "head of cattle")

[Gharial]

Rather than dismiss Querido's answer out of hand by means of some questionable English "exemplars" ('cup of' is much more likely to be omitted from the context of 'a coffee' than 'glass of' or 'bottle of' is from ?'a wine'), why not just accept that there are possible similarities between the languages? English it is true may lack the somewhat redundant simple counting "measures" of Chinese, but both languages certainly do have mass measures (i.e. partitives) and group measures (i.e. collectives), so some analogizing is perfectly valid.

 

By the way, re. your "farmers used to say 'head of cattle' but the term is not usually used and 'one cow' is prefered", I think you misread or are misquoting the wiki. All it's really saying is that 'head of cattle' is or has been used with numbers (well, herds) greater than one. (Not that just simply saying whatever number of cows - a cow, two cows, three cows, four - wouldn't be a more straightforward way of expressing things, certainly nowadays, and probably many farmers do exactly that, unless they happen to be like Farmer Palmer from Viz).

[boctulus]

@Gharial: I can agree the comparison is useful as a beginning but ...... can you find any sense to specify something like "one dog-animal" ?

[Gharial]

It would help if you said where you‘re getting that quote or information ("one dog-animal") from. Oh wait, that may just be your own phrasing. Either way, I'm assuming it's referring to something like 一只狗 (in which case, surely the gloss should instead be something like "one-animal: dog").

 

See also: http://chinese.stackexchange.com/questions/581/what-is-the-difference-between-%E4%B8%80%E5%8F%AA%E7%8B%97-and-%E4%B8%80%E6%9D%A1%E7%8B%97

[Michael H]

Although shouldn't blindly trust Wikipedia (as I know from reading articles about topics which I am expert on), the following article gives some good basic information:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classifier_(linguistics)

[boctulus]

Thanks Micheal H, I've already taken a brief look to the link

 

Anyway, I feel it's still unsolved  

 

 

     << not sure what it means but I like "rolling eyes" 

[Gharial]

     << not sure what it means but I like "rolling eyes" 

 

 

You use of the eyeroll emoticon is neither funny nor endearing. You do realize you are at best making yourself look ignorant, and at worst exhibiting contempt for those who've so far replied to you?

[boctulus]

@Gharial:  I think you are offtopic at best.

 

I did a research but I could not get answers and of course there is no obligation for anybody to give an answer in this forum.  Said that, you can unfollow the thread if you want

 

---

BTW, I just enfatize "questions are still unsolved" because I've already read the Wiki links

[boctulus]

I will double post to keep separate things.

 

 

The answer though is, why not? Unrelated languages can be the same in certain respects, that is, they don't logically need to differ in each and every aspect. But such stuff is ultimately more the province of language typologists or universal grammarians, eh!

 

Well, of course It's possible but in particular for "measure words", they are spread for almost all sino-tibetan language so, maybe it's not casual japanese use "measure words"  but the question is.... why?  where is the advantage in japanese ? (why take something as classifiers from chinese? when there is no gain ?)

[Gharial]

I'm not following this thread, I merely tried to contribute to it. I haven't ever made use of the unfollow function, and have no intention of doing so, as there are other people posting on these forums than you, you know. Good luck eliciting replies and avoiding downvotes in future, you may need it given your style of "communicating".

[boctulus]

Well, maybe for you..... questions are not contributions, for others maybe yes

[Gharial]

Questions can be contributions if at some point they end up answering themselves (and I mean reasonably conclusively, otherwise they may ultimately seem like just so much idle speculation). I guess we'll need to see in this case.

[boctulus]

EDIT: I did but my speculation was wrong because "although classifiers were not often used in Classical Chinese, in all modern Chinese varieties, such as Mandarin, nouns are normally required to be accompanied by a classifier or measure word when they are qualified by a numeral or by a demonstrative"

[Gharial]

Well, if you have found stuff, however tentative, that shows how measure words may've evolved in order to distinguish homophonous monosyllabics (so the nouns themselves were remaining resolutely monosyllabic?) or whatever, by all means present it. I'm not the one who proposed the (your) theory, so obviously I'm not too bothered about proving it. And I don't mind admitting I'm not as into or informed about such stuff as you may be. I do however know that the native Japanese system is only good for counting things up to around 10, and the J counter words listed on Wikipedia all seem to be loaned hanzi with On (Sino-Japanese) readings. Which explains why Japanese, at least informal spoken Japanese, didn't seem too measure-word dependent to me.

[The_]

.

[Flickserve]

I usually ignore questions like these. It's like asking why write squiggly lines instead of using an alphabet? Why write right to left or vertically down?

Sometimes you just have to shrug your shoulders and say that's the special feature of the language.

[Gharial]

MAYBE one explanation for chinese lang. could be to clear about what is be counted (because homophones) BEFORE chinese become a bi/poly-syllabic language.

 

 

EDIT: I did but my speculation was wrong because "although classifiers were not often used in Classical Chinese, in all modern Chinese varieties, such as Mandarin, nouns are normally required to be accompanied by a classifier or measure word when they are qualified by a numeral or by a demonstrative"

 

LOL has...Wikipedia? (cite your sources, especially when quoting!) got you backtracking now? I don't know enough about Classical Chinese but it doesn't surprise me that ("or wouldn't surprise me if") it's appreciably different from modern Chinese. Mind you, that 'not often used' doesn't mean or suggest they weren't used at all, so there may still be a ray of hope for "your" line of research.

 

 

It's like asking why write squiggly lines instead of using an alphabet?

 

That analogy occurred to me too, Flickserve, but (morpho)syllabograms do seem, at least at first (until the syllabograms proliferate, in attempts to disambiguate etc), a logical invention and "development" for a morphosyllabic or isolating (or whatever the term is), and back then apparently an appreciably more monosyllabic, language. (I posted something about this sort of stuff, from a chapter-length survey of writing systems by Peter Daniels, here: http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/50581-how-can-i-learn-why-chinese-language-is-as-it-is/?p=388967 ). Hmm, but has there ever been a truly conclusive answer though to the question of why characters are really necessary despite people generally managing to "at least" speak just fine without them? It's not like literal characters (or talk about them) rather than simply sounds and words need to come out of their mouths all the time, is it? It's been a while since I read DeFrancis, but maybe e.g. Hannas is more the man for this?

[imron]

can you find any sense to specify something like "one dog-animal" ?

Since when were languages supposed to make sense?  You'll find plenty of nonsensical things in every language.