Unifying modifiers, classifiers and demonstratives
Chenyuan Deng, Antonio Machicao y Priemer, Giuseppe Varaschin
November 2024 

We argue that the distributional properties of modifiers, classifiers and demonstratives with respect to nouns in Mandarin Chinese motivate a head-functor approach (Van Eynde 2006), where NUM(eral)-CL(assifier)-N(oun) sequences are analyzed as left branching structures with N as the head. This approach explains the distributional similarities between all prenominal categories by unifying their combinatorial properties under a single phrasal schema while also accounting for their differences by means of selectional constraints and a hierarchy of MARKING values. We also analyze classifiers themselves as special kinds of noun. All in all, our analysis entails that nominal complexes in Mandarin Chinese are fundamentally different from those found in languages with dedicated specifiers (e.g. determiners in a language like English), suggesting a two-way typology that is parallel to the NP/DP parameter proposed in the minimalist tradition (Bošković 2007, i.a.).

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/008541 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	In Gabriela Bîlbîie & Gerhard Schaden (eds.), Empirical issues in syntax and semantics: Selected papers from CSSP 2023
keywords:	classifiers, modifiers, demonstratives, mandarin chinese, left-branching, np structure, word order, nominal phrases, syntax, measure classifiers, sortal classifiers, np/dp parameter, hpsg, head-functor analysis, head-specifier, locality, semantics, syntax
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