Animateness and shape in classifiers

Bibliographic Data

ID4736364
AuthorsSetsuko Kiyomi (Department of Linguistics Indiana University Memorial Hall 303 Bloomington IN 47405, corresponding author)
Year1992
Volume43
Issue1
Pages15-36
Publication date1992-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueWORD (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0043-7956 • E-ISSN: 2373-5112
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00437956.1992.12098277
OpenAlexW3099577473
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited10

Scholars like Adams and Conklin (1973), Denny (1976), and Allan (1977) have maintained that ‘animateness’ and ‘shape’ are fundamental categories for classifiers. The hierarchical relation between these categories, however, has not been fully examined. The aim of this paper is to discuss whether there is an implicational universal between them. First classifiers are grouped into two types (i.e. ‘free morpheme classifiers’ and ‘bound morpheme classifiers’), and then their semantic properties are examined, focusing attention on those classifiers which are semantically differentiated via ‘animateness’ and ‘shape.’ Our findings indicate that there is no implicational universal that languages must include these two categories since some languages do not include shape-based classifiers and others do not have any classifiers of animateness. We propose, then, that only one of these semantic properties is an obligatory feature of every classifier system

Classifier (UML · Data mining · Feature (linguistics · Linguistics · Morpheme · Natural language processing · Pattern recognition (psychology · Random subspace method · Relation (database · Artificial Intelligence · Categorization, perception, and language · Computer Science · Philosophy

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access