In
linguisticsLinguistics is the scientific study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of meaning...
,
measure words, known more formally as
numeral classifiers and also called
counters,
count words,
counter words, or
counting words, are words (or
morphemeIn morpheme-based morphology, a ' is the smallest linguistic unit that has semantic meaning.In spoken language, morphemes are composed of phonemes , and in written language morphemes are composed of graphemes .The concept morpheme differs from the concept word, as many morphemes...
s) that are used in combination with a
numeralIn linguistics, number names are specific words in a natural language that represent numbers.In writing, numerals are symbols also representing numbers.-Numeral types:...
to indicate the count of
nounIn linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition....
s. The term "numeral classifier" arises from the fact that measure words often classify the noun they modify into some semantic class closely akin, but distinct from
grammatical numberIn linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
or
genderIn linguistics, grammatical genders, sometimes also called noun classes, are classes of nouns reflected in the behavior of associated words; every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be very few which belong to several classes at once....
. Measure words are most often used when counting. Their use is analogous to
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
words that represent units or portions of
mass nounIn linguistics, a mass noun is a common noun that presents entities as an unbounded mass. Given that different languages have different grammatical resources, the actual test for which nouns are mass nouns may vary between languages...
s, for example
one drop of milk,
ten grains of rice,
fifty head of cattle,
three pieces of cake.
Global distribution
Measure words are part of the grammar of most
East Asian languagesEast Asian languages describe two notional groupings of languages in East and Southeast Asia:* Languages which have been greatly influenced by Classical Chinese and the Chinese writing system, in particular Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese .* The larger grouping of languages including the...
, including
ChineseChinese or the Sinitic language is a language family consisting of languages mutually unintelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the two branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
,
Japaneseis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family. There are a number of proposed relationships with other languages, but none have gained general acceptance...
,
KoreanKorean is the official language of North Korea and South Korea. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers. It was formerly written using Hanja, borrowed Chinese characters pronounced in the Korean...
,
VietnameseVietnamese , formerly known under French colonization as Annamese , is the national and official language of Vietnam...
,
MalayMalay is a group of languages closely related to each other to the point of mutual intelligibility but that linguists consider to be separate languages. They are grouped into a group called "Local Malay", part of a larger group called "Malayan" within the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the...
,
BurmeseThe Burmese language is the official language of Burma. Although the constitution officially recognizes it as the Myanmar language, most continue to refer to the language as Burmese. It is the native language of the Bamar and other related sub-ethnic groups of the Bamar...
,
ThaiThai is the national and official language of Thailand and the mother tongue of the Thai people, Thailand's dominant ethnic group. Thai is a member of the Tai group of the Kradai language family. The Kradai languages are thought to have originated in what is now southern China, and are linked to...
,
HmongHmong or Mong is the common name for a group of dialects of the West Hmongic branch of the Hmong-Mien/Miao-Yao language family spoken by the Hmong people of Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, northern Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos...
, and the
BengaliBengali or Bangla is an Indo-Aryan language of the eastern Indian subcontinent, evolved from the Magadhi Prakrit and Sanskrit languages....
and
Munda languagesThe Munda languages are a language family spoken by about nine million people in central and eastern India and Bangladesh. They constitute a branch of the Austroasiatic language family, generally placed in opposition to the Mon-Khmer languages of Southeast Asia, which means they are distantly...
just to the west of the East and Southeast Asia linguistic area. Among
indigenous languages of the AmericasIndigenous languages of the Americas are spoken by indigenous peoples from the southern tip of South America to Alaska and Greenland, encompassing the land masses which constitute the Americas. These indigenous languages consist of dozens of distinct language families as well as many language...
, measure words occur in the
Pacific NorthwestThe Pacific Northwest is a region in the northwest of North America, bound by the Pacific Ocean to the west. There are several partially overlapping definitions of the region, but they generally include the Canadian province of British Columbia and the U.S. states of Washington and Oregon, and...
, especially among the
Tsimshianic languagesThe Tsimshianic languages are a family of languages spoken in northwestern British Columbia and in southern Alaska on Annette Island and Ketchikan. About 2,170 people of the ethnic Tsimshian population in Canada still speak the Tsimshian languages ; about 50 of the 1,300 Tsimshian people living in...
, and in many languages of Mesoamerica, including
Classic MayaThe Classic Maya language is the oldest historically-attested member of the Mayan language family. It is the main language documented in the pre-Columbian inscriptions of the Classic Era Maya civilization.- Relationships :...
and most of its modern derivatives. They also occur in some languages of the Amazon Basin (most famously
YaguaThe Yagua language is spoken by the Yagua people, primarily in northeastern Peru. As of 2005, it appears that a few speakers may have migrated northward across the Peruvian-Colombian border near the town of Leticia.- Genetic affiliation :...
) and a very small number of West African languages.
In contrast, measure words are entirely absent not only from European languages, but also from northern Asia (
UralicThe Uralic languages constitute a language family of 39 languages spoken by approximately 25 million people. The healthiest Uralic languages in terms of the number of native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Mari and Udmurt...
,
TurkicThe Turkic languages constitute a language family of some thirty languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.Turkic languages are spoken by some...
,
MongolicThe Mongolic languages are a group of languages spoken in Central Asia, notably including Mongolian.Mongolic is sometimes grouped with Turkic and Tungusic as part of the larger Altaic family....
,
TungusicThe Tungusic languages are spoken by Tungusic people in Eastern Siberia and Manchuria. Many Tungusic languages are endangered, and the long-term future of the family is uncertain...
and mainland
Paleosiberian languagesPaleosiberian languages or Paleoasian languages is a term of convenience used in linguistics to classify a disparate group of languages spoken in remote regions of Siberia...
), from Australian Aboriginal languages, and also from the indigenous languages of the southern parts of both North and South America. In
Austronesian languagesThe Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia. It is on par with Bantu, Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic and Uralic as one of the best-established ancient language families...
, measure words have been acquired as a result of contact with
Mon-Khmer languagesThe Mon-Khmer languages are the autochthonous language family of Southeast Asia. Together with the Munda languages of India, they are one of the two traditional primary branches of the Austroasiatic family...
but the most remote members such as
MalagasyMalagasy is the national language of Madagascar.-History:The Malagasy language is unrelated to nearby African languages, instead being the westernmost member of the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian language family, a fact noted as long ago as the eighteenth century...
and
HawaiianThe Hawaiian language is a Polynesian language that takes its name from Hawaii, the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. Hawaiian, along with English, is an official language of the state of Hawaii...
have gradually lost them.
The
World Atlas of Language StructuresThe World Atlas of Language Structures is "a large database of structural properties of languages gathered from descriptive materials". It was first published by Oxford University Press as a book with CD rom in 2005, and was released as the second edition on the Internet in April 2008...
has a
global map showing 400 languages and
chapter text including geographical discussion:
Numeral classifiers exhibit striking worldwide distribution at the global level. The main concentration of numeral classifiers is in a single zone centered in East and Southeast Asia, but reaching out both westwards and eastwards. To the west, numeral classifiers peter out as one proceeds across the South Asian subcontinent; thus, in this particular region, the occurrence of numeral classifiers cross-cuts what has otherwise been characterized as one of the classical examples of a linguistic area, namely, South Asia. However, numeral classifiers pick up again, albeit in optional usage, in parts of western Asia centering on Iran and Turkey; it is not clear whether this should be considered as a continuation of the same large though interrupted isogloss, or as a separate one. To the east, numeral classifiers extend out through the Indonesian archipelago, and then into the Pacific in a grand arc through Micronesia and then down to the southeast, tapering out in New Caledonia and western Polynesia. Interestingly, whereas in the western parts of the Indonesian archipelago numeral classifiers are often optional, in the eastern parts of the archipelago and in Micronesia numeral classifiers tend once more, as in mainland East and Southeast Asia, to be obligatory. Outside this single large zone, numeral classifiers are almost exclusively restricted to a number of smaller hotbeds, in West Africa, the Pacific Northwest, Mesoamerica, and the Amazon basin. In large parts of the world, numeral classifiers are completely absent.
Indo-European languages
In contrast to Asian languages and others, measure words are not grammatical in the case of most
Indo-European languagesThe Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major languages of Europe, Iran, and northern India, and historically also predominant in Anatolia and Central Asia...
including
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
.
English
English has a distinction between
mass nounIn linguistics, a mass noun is a common noun that presents entities as an unbounded mass. Given that different languages have different grammatical resources, the actual test for which nouns are mass nouns may vary between languages...
s and
count nounIn linguistics, a count noun is a common noun that can be modified by a numeral and occur in both singular and plural form, as well as co-occurring with quantificational determiners like every, each, several, etc. A mass noun has none of these properties...
s, and employs a small number of fixed words that can be considered semantically-oriented counters. Consider the following:
- five head of cattle (said by ranchers)
- ten stem of roses (said by florists)
- three pair of pants (or pairs)
Note that the preceding measure words are
singularIn linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
in form. If they were
pluralPlural, commonly abbreviated pl., is a grammatical number, typically referring to more than one of the referent in the real world. In the English language, singular and plural are the only grammatical numbers.-English:...
, the first two phrases would have different meanings.
Most measure words in English are more accurately called
units of measurementA measurement unit is a scalar quantity, defined and adopted by convention, with which any other quantity of the same kind can be compared to express the ratio of the two quantities as a number....
. They are normal count nouns, not
grammatical particleA particle, in grammar, is a function word that is not assignable to any of the traditional grammatical word classes . The term is a catch-all term for a heterogeneous set of elements and lacks a precise universal definition...
s. A measure word is the only way to quantify a mass noun:
- three cups of coffee
- four kernels of corn, three ears of corn, two bushels of corn
- one litre
The litre or liter is a unit of volume. There are two official symbols: the Latin letter L in lower and upper case . The lower case L is also often written as a cursive ℓ, though this symbol has no official approval by any international bureau...
of water
A corn (taken in the sense of
grain) is ungrammatical and is almost never heard. Note that this is purely for reasons of grammar; semantically,
corn usually refers to a plurality of grains and not an amorphous mass. But
corn is grammatically a mass noun and so there is no singular form
a corn.
With count nouns, however, measure words are unnecessary. A number alone can be used as an adjective to modify the noun to be counted:
- four pencils
- three horses
English also features some cases in which the number and the measure word are combined as a single word: for example, when counting
- golfers: twosome, threesome, foursome...
- musicians: solo
In music, a solo is a piece or a section of a piece played or sung by a single performer...
, duetA duet is a musical composition or piece for two performers. In classical music the term is most often used for a composition for two singers or pianists; with other instruments, the word duo is also often used. A piece performed by two pianists performing together on the same piano is referred to...
, trioTrio is generally used in any of the following ways:*Three musicians playing the same or different musical instrument.*The performance of a song by three people.*The contrasting section of a piece in ternary form...
, quartetIn music, a quartet is a method of instrumentation , used to perform a musical composition, and consisting of four parts.-Western art music:...
...
- wombmates: twin
Twins are two offspring resulting from the same pregnancy, usually born in close succession. They can be the same or different sex. Twins can either be monozygotic or dizygotic ....
s, triplets, quadruplets....
See also collective noun for a concept related to measure words that is found in English.
Bengali
Although not typical for an Indo-European language,
BengaliBengali or Bangla is an Indo-Aryan language of the eastern Indian subcontinent, evolved from the Magadhi Prakrit and Sanskrit languages....
makes use of measure words. Every noun in this language must have its corresponding measure word (MW) when used with a numeral or other quantifier. Most nouns take the generic measure word
ţa, although there are many more specific measure words, such as
jon, which is only used to count humans. Still, the number of measure words in Bengali certainly does not compare to that of Chinese or Japanese. As in Chinese, Bengali nouns are not inflected for number.
| Bengali |
Literal English translation |
Normal English translation |
| Nôe-ţa ghoŗi |
Nine-MW clock |
Nine clocks |
| Kôe-ţa balish |
How.many-MW pillow |
How many pillows |
| Ônek-jon lok |
Many-MW person |
Many people |
| Char-pañch-jon shikkhôk |
Four-five-MW teacher |
Four or five teachers |
Similar to the situation in Chinese, measuring nouns in Bengali without their corresponding measure words (e.g.
aţ biŗal instead of
aţ-ţa biŗal "eight cats") would typically be considered ungrammatical. However, also note that it is common to have situations where the measure word is omitted when it counts a non-nominative word: e.g., aţ biŗaler desh (eight cats-possessive country ), or panc bhUte khelo (five ghosts-instrumental ate). Also, for large count values, the measure word is redundant, e.g., ek sho lok esechhe ("One hundred people have come.").
Also interesting to note that it is grammatical to hear sentences without the measure words, e.g., amar char chhele (I-possessive four boy, I have four sons). In this case, the semantic stress is not on the actual counting, but a statement of fact, which is a case similar to English. The -ţa suffix comes from /goţa/ 'piece', and is also used as a definite article.
Omitting the noun and preserving the measure word is grammatical and not uncommon to hear. For example,
Shudhu êk-jon thakbe. (lit. "Only one-
MW will remain.") would be understood to mean "Only one
person will remain.", since
jon can only be used to count humans. The word
lok "person" is implied.
Nepali
Nepali has a system very similar to Bengali's, using
-waṭā (-वटा) for objects and "-janā" (-जना) for humans.
East Asian languages
Languages such as
AinuAinu is an Ainu language spoken by members of the Ainu ethnic group on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaidō....
,
ChineseChinese or the Sinitic language is a language family consisting of languages mutually unintelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the two branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
,
Japaneseis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family. There are a number of proposed relationships with other languages, but none have gained general acceptance...
,
KoreanKorean is the official language of North Korea and South Korea. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers. It was formerly written using Hanja, borrowed Chinese characters pronounced in the Korean...
,
VietnameseVietnamese , formerly known under French colonization as Annamese , is the national and official language of Vietnam...
, and
ThaiThai is the national and official language of Thailand and the mother tongue of the Thai people, Thailand's dominant ethnic group. Thai is a member of the Tai group of the Kradai language family. The Kradai languages are thought to have originated in what is now southern China, and are linked to...
use measure words as the standard way of indicating the count of the number of items, rather than, as in most Indo-European languages, allowing numbers to count a
nounIn linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition....
directly.
Korean
Korean uses special measure or counting words to count objects and events.
In English, one must say, "two sheets of paper" rather than "two papers". In Korean, the term
jang (장) is used to count sheets, or paper-like material in general. So "ten bus tickets" would be
beoseu pyo yeol jang (버스 표 열 장), literally, "bus ticket ten 'sheets'".
There are two systems of numerals in Korean: native Korean and Sino-Korean. Native Korean numerals are used with most counter words.
yeol gwa (열 과) would mean "ten lessons" while
sip gwa (십 과) would mean "lesson ten".
Sino-Korean numeralsThe Korean language has two regularly used sets of numerals, a Sino-Korean system and a native Korean system.-Construction:For both native and Sino-Korean numerals, the teens are represented by a combination of tens and the ones places...
are used with many time counters.
Burmese
In
BurmeseThe Burmese language is the official language of Burma. Although the constitution officially recognizes it as the Myanmar language, most continue to refer to the language as Burmese. It is the native language of the Bamar and other related sub-ethnic groups of the Bamar...
, measure words, in the form of particles, are used when counting or measuring nouns. They immediately follow the numerical quantification. Nouns to which the classifiers refer to can be omitted if the context allows, because many classifiers have implicit meanings.
| Burmese |
Literal translation |
English translation |
Thu tu hna chaung shi de |
He-chopstick-two-[classifier for long and thin items]-[have-particle indicating present tense]. |
He has two chopsticks. |
Zabwe khun-hna khu shi la |
Table-seven-[general classifier for items]-have-[particle indicating question] |
Do you have seven tables? |
lu ta u |
one-[classifier for people]-person |
one person or a person |
Chinese
In
MandarinMandarin , is a category of related Chinese dialects spoken across most of northern and south-western China. When taken as a separate language, as is often done in academic literature, the Mandarin language has more native speakers than any other language...
, nouns are not declined for
singular or plural numberIn linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
; a noun without a classifier can be translated as either singular or plural. Classifiers are used when enumerating a
count nounIn linguistics, a count noun is a common noun that can be modified by a numeral and occur in both singular and plural form, as well as co-occurring with quantificational determiners like every, each, several, etc. A mass noun has none of these properties...
:
| Chinese |
Literal translation |
Grammatically correct/idiomatic translation |
Tā yǒu sān shuāng kuaìzi. |
He have three pair chopstick. |
He has three pairs of chopsticks. |
Nǐ yǒu méi yǒu qī zhāng zhuōzi? |
You have-not-have seven [flat-thing classifier] table? |
Do you have seven tables? |
yí gè rén |
one [general classifier] person |
one person or a person |
Measure words are not used often in
Classical ChineseClassical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese based on the grammar and vocabulary of ancient Chinese, making it different from any modern spoken form of Chinese...
, and it is not obligatory to use them. In all dialects of modern Chinese, however, measure words are
obligatory with enumeration of
all count nouns;
yī rén in modern Chinese when used as a measure word is grammatically incorrect. The choice of a classifier for each noun is a matter of grammar, is somewhat arbitrary–though frequently corresponds with a relatively well-defined classification of objects based on physical characteristics–and must be memorized by learners of Chinese. The classifier assigned to a noun often has an imagistic association with that object. Thus,
zhāng has
table as one of its meanings, and is used for large and thin objects. (Though uncommon, it is even possible to omit the noun if the choice of classifier makes the intended noun obvious–like the Bengali example above.) Not all classifier words derive from nouns. For example, the word
bǎ can also be a verb meaning
to grab, and is the measure word for objects that have handles.
Japanese
In
Japaneseis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family. There are a number of proposed relationships with other languages, but none have gained general acceptance...
grammar, most nouns are effectively mass nouns, and measure words must be used with a number when counting them. The appropriate measure word is chosen based on the kind and shape of the noun, and combines with the numeral, sometimes adopting several different forms. This is similar to
noun classIn linguistics, the term noun class refers to a system of categorizing nouns. A noun may belong to a given class because of characteristic features of its referent, such as sex, animacy, shape, but counting a given noun among nouns of such or another class is often clearly conventional...
es in many African languages, except that the classifiers are used only when counting.
| Japanese |
English, literal |
English |
鉛筆五本
enpitsu go-hon |
pencil five cylindrical-things |
five pencils |
犬三匹
inu san-biki |
dog three animal-things |
three dogs |
子供四人
kodomo yo-nin |
child four people-things |
four children |
| niwatori san-wa |
chicken three bird-things |
three chickens |
ヨット三艘
yotto san-sō |
yacht three boat-things |
three yachts |
車一台
kuruma ichi-dai |
car one mechanical-thing |
one car |
トランプ二枚
toranpu ni-mai |
playing card two flat-things |
two cards |
See also
- Analytic language
- Classifier (linguistics)
A classifier, in linguistics, is a word or morpheme used in some languages to classify a noun according to its meaning.Classifier systems should not be confused with noun classes, which often categorize nouns in ways independent from meaning, such as according to morphology.-Definition and...
- Collective noun
- Grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
- Korean count word
Like Japanese and Chinese, Korean uses special measure or counting words to count objects and events, in Korean: 수분류사 .In English, one must say, "two sheets of paper" rather than "two papers". In Korean, the term jang is used to count sheets, or paper-like material in general...
- Mass noun
In linguistics, a mass noun is a common noun that presents entities as an unbounded mass. Given that different languages have different grammatical resources, the actual test for which nouns are mass nouns may vary between languages...
- Number names
In linguistics, number names are specific words in a natural language that represent numbers.In writing, numerals are symbols also representing numbers.-Numeral types:...
- Quantification
Quantification has two distinct sense. In mathematics and empirical science, it is the act of counting and measuring that maps human sense observations and experiences into members of some set of numbers. Quantification in this sense is fundamental to the scientific method.In logic, quantification...
- Unit of measurement