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Talk:Chinese classifier/Archive 2

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Latest comment: 10 years ago by Rjanag in topic Changes to lede
Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3

原子弹

Latest comment: 12 years ago5 comments4 people in discussion

More comments

Latest comment: 14 years ago30 comments3 people in discussion
  • I (really) don't like "Classifiers themselves" as the title of a section.
  • "a few exceptional cases such as head of game" what is 'head of game'?
  • "this category includes measures such as kilometers, liters, or pounds" kilometers, etc. are not measures, but units.
  • the classifiers are not underlined for the pizza examples
  • are Lisa Cheng and Rint Sybesma worthy of being redlinked?
    • Probably not. Sybesma has written a lot of good articles that are widely cited, but I can't find much that's specifically about him or about the influence of his works, so I doubt he falls within WP's current standard of notability; I'm not very familiar with Cheng. So I doubt either of these people would be able to have articles anytime soon. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 19:54, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
  • "with most actual words" actual seems redundant
  • "I've been to Beijing two times" I would change 'two' in the example to 'three', because I think the sentence would otherwise more naturally be translated "I've been to Beijing twice"
  • "has raised the question of why count-classifiers (as opposed to mass-classifiers) exist at all" -> Is 'has questioned the reason for the existence of count-classifiers' better?
    • That sounds a bit awkward to me...the word "questioned" implies an accusation that something's not true or not correct (ie, "I questioned his reasons for lending you the money" means maybe he had ulterior motives), but this sentence is not meant to imply criticism, just wondering/curiosity. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 19:54, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
  • "One hypothesis for why count-classifiers exist is that they serve more of a cognitive purpose than a practical one" -> 'Some hypothesize that count-classifiers exist to serve a cognitive purpose more than a practical one.
  • "to organize or categorize objects in the world" -> 'in the world' is unnecessary
  • (i.e., they provide a linguistic way for speakers to organize or categorize objects in the world) -> Maybe properly make a sentence of that, without the brackets.
  • "Historical linguists have found that number-plus-noun phrases" For consistency, maybe change to "Number – Noun phrases"
  • In an effort to add pictures to the article, maybe we could depict a set nouns that use a common classifier. It could surprise Westerners that Chinese categorize pizzas, papers and benches together. (Actually, that could be a nice selection of 'flat' nouns.)

... maybe more. GeometryGirl (talk) 19:28, 5 August 2009 (UTC)


Quick question for you: I also added some images to the Variation in usage section, and am now fiddling with layout. Do you prefer this version (which perhaps violates MOSIMAGE's suggestion not to wedge text between images and not to put left-aligned images right below section headers), or this version (which is perhaps a bit cramped)? [Another alternative is just to remove the building and just have one image; I added the building example because it was the first to pop into my mind, but actually I think the painting example is better, and it's less redundant—the building is just another example of a phenomenon that already has a different example in the text.] rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 02:25, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

I prefer by far the second version. Maybe we could condense the descriptions a little to 'uncramp' the situation. For example,

"A painting may be referred to with the classifiers 张 and 幅; both phrases mean the same thing, but convey different stylistic effects." -> A painting may be referred to with 张 or 幅 for varying stylistic effects. 92.149.134.23 (talk) 20:36, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

  • Both 'ge' and 'gè' are used. Maybe homogenise. 92.149.134.23 (talk) 20:51, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
    • I think you fixed the last one of those. In spoken Chinese, 个 is usually pronounced as toneless (or 'neutral tone') when it's in a noun phrase, and only pronounced as gè when by itself or in something special (for example, in the word 个体, where is is not a classifier but is just the first morpheme of a two-syllable compound word); the writing generally reflects this, too, as far as I know. Thus, I used gè when using the character by itself, and ge when it's in an example phrase. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 21:04, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
  • 'count-classifiers are not inherently "necessary"' -> 'inherently "necessary"' is redundant and a more precise word could be used to the replace the expression. Requisite, required, mandatory suggests my thesaurus.
    • "Mandatory" sounds good to me; I think "inherently" is important for the context here, since the discussion is about how mass-classifiers are mandatory by their very nature but count-classifiers are not. Another possible rewording is "not inherently necessary for communication" or something like that. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 21:04, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
      • Changed.
  • 'versus' and 'vs.' are used in the titles of sections. Maybe homogenize; or better, remove the construction.

I'm off for the WE. We can discuss more issues when I come back. 92.149.134.23 (talk) 23:23, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

All right; thanks a ton for all your help so far! rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 00:44, 7 August 2009 (UTC)


Another quick question for you when you get a chance: as an attempt to deal with the underlining issue that some people raised, I made a sample of what the article would look like using color instead of underlines, here. Do you have any opinions on it? (Personally, I am slightly against it because it looks messy to me and there could be accessibility problems, but if there are no alternatives it might still be better than underlining, who knows.) rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 03:24, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Comments

Latest comment: 14 years ago53 comments3 people in discussion

Lead

  • "to define the quantity of a given object" -> wording, do objects really have 'quantities'? and are 'quantities' really 'defined'?
    • I think so, for both questions, but that doesn't mean the wording could be improved. In fact, many linguistic articles (especially in Chinese) just define classifiers as "words that come between a number and a noun". I have been avoiding this definition because it doesn't seem very useful (it defines when classifiers appear, not necessarily what they are) and is not technically accurate (they can appear after nouns, as described in the Special Uses section), although it covers most of the cases. That being said, perhaps a cop-out definition like that is better than speculating about what they are "for". Here are some other definitions that have been thrown around:
      • "denotes some salient perceived or imputed characteristic of the entity to which the associated noun refers", Allan 1977. I would not use this, though; it's very much within the classical/categorical view, which is more or less discredited in most of the modern classifier literature.
      • "syntactically obligatory when the counting of the head noun is to be carried out", Zhang 2007, adapted from Li & Thompson 1981 and a bunch of other stuff. Pretty much the same idea as the definition I described above—it's more focusing on where/when they appear, rather than what they are.
      • words that both help "quantify" a noun and "reveal some characteristics of the entities denoted by the noun", Li Wendan 2000.
    • rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 02:53, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
  • "bound morphemes: in other words" -> the colon already means 'in other words'
  • "a demonstrative ("this" or "that")" -> "this" and "that" don't form an exhaustive list of the demonstratives
  • "and the classifier may often be avoided by using a bare noun" -> is 'often' necessary? are there examples where a bare noun cannot be used?
    • The stuff about avoiding classifier use usually refers only to with the number one (as on "one-CL-person", "one-CL-car", etc., where you can say either that or just "person", "car", depending on what the focus of the sentence is). Any time you actually want to specify a number other than 1, a classifier is necessary. (Also, I figured saying 'often' would be better than making any bold claims like 'classifiers can be avoided altogether if...', which readers might misinterpret—I can just picture some overzealous first-year Chinese student telling his teacher he's not going to bother learning measure words because he read on Wikipedia that he doesn't need them ;) ). rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 11:50, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
  • "have proposed that the use of classifier phrases" -> the term 'classifier phrase' is used for the first time without explanation
  • "Finally, in addition to simply counting items" -> 'simply' is redundant
  • "to signify "all of" or "every"" -> maybe add ', respectively'
    • Replaced with " a plural or indefinite quantity", in accordance with a similar change in the respective subsection.
  • The traditional of 条 is 條
  • "(for example, "dictionary" takes the same ..." -> is this example really needed in the lead?
  • "about where the Chinese system came from" -> 'about the origins of the Chinese system'?
  • "and probably moved in front" -> Was Chinese always written from left to right?
    • "in front" doesn't necessarily mean "to the left" ;). It only seems that way to us Latin script users. Anyway, in response to your question, Chinese was written right to left for a long time, but that's irrelevant; 'in front' refers to the position of the words as they are read, regardless of the direction of the script, so for a right-to-left script 'in front' means 'to the right' and for a left-to-right script it means the opposite. (and for a top-to-bottom script, it means 'above.) rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 03:04, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
  • "valued items such as horses and poems" -> are poems items? are horses even items?
  • "many words that are classifiers today started out as full nouns" -> can we replace 'full nouns' by 'common nouns'?
    • I don't think so; the point is that they had all the characteristics of nouns. We could replace it with "real nouns" or "actual nouns", although that sounds somewhat like it's suggesting that classifiers are no more than crappy nouns ;). rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 03:08, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
      • I don't understand. Saying that classifiers were common nouns [in the grammatical sense] implies that they had all the characteristics of (common) nouns. GeometryGirl (talk) 10:55, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
        • Hm...true, but I don't think that says it as directly. Also, 'common noun' refers specifically to non-proper nouns; while clssifiers all (AFAIK) did come from nouns that weren't proper nouns, the common/proper-ness is not what's of relevance in this section. Also, I had to look up "common noun" to see what it meant, as I don't think I've heard it in a very long time (although I guess you could say the same thing about 'full noun', I'm not sure if it's even a real word). rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 11:42, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
  • For the lead image, maybe write on top of the left image 'simplified' and on top of the right 'traditional' so as clean up the description.
    • You mean adding text to the image itself? I don't think there is a way to add text outside the image (ie, captions both above and below) without making up a whole new template. Also, personally I don't find the description too long or cluttered, and it seems to me that adding text above the image would be just as messy as the current caption is. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 03:08, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
  • Maybe add somewhere in the lead that almost all Chinese classifiers are just one character long. Is this covered in the text later?
    • They're not all one character long; there are a few that have multiple characters (I think I mentioned them a couple sections above this one: These include measurement units like 英里、公斤、etc., and monosyllabic classifiers as pronounced in dialects with erhua, such as 块儿). There are also "compound classifiers" such as "10架次航天飞机" (10 [plane classifier]-[times classifier] sky airplane), which means "10 flights"—these classifiers correspond roughly to English constructions like "per person per trip" and things like that. I think their status is somewhat controversial, and in any case they are pretty uncommon (I don't remember having ever encountered ones like this in real life, and only just recently found them mentioned in a book), but they are at least examples of possible multi-character classifiers. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 03:08, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
      • I saw what you wrote earlier. However my point is that, as you say, they are very rare and merely of dictionary existence. Isn't this an interesting fact to add to the article? GeometryGirl (talk) 10:50, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
        • While the compound classifiers are rare (or at least seem rare to me), the other ones are not so much; less common than others, but I wouldn't call them 'rare'. Also, the intro does mention that they are bound morphemes (I thought function words were also mentioned somewhere, but it looks like they're not, maybe I removed it somewhere), which do tend to be short. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 11:42, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

86.213.118.112 (talk) 17:59, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Usage

  • "Furthermore, numbers and demonstratives are often not required in Chinese, so speakers may choose not to use a number" what about demonstrative for the latter part of the sentence?
  • Can we change the Zhangsan example to a Wang example?
    • I don't see why not...but why does it need changed? Zhangsan is sort of a "John Doe" name used in Chinese example sentences a lot—in fact, on zh-wiki Zhangsan redirects to Placeholder name. Do you think using a one-character name would be better? (Even then, though, it would seem unnatural to use one character, as someone named Wang generally goes by a name like 小王 "little Wang" or 老王 "old Wang"—also on the Chinese "placeholder name" article, all the examples given are two-character names.) rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 12:02, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
      • I was thinking of something like XiaoWang that seems to be a simpler/more widely known name. But if Zhangsan is the common placeholder name, that's great! We could even link Zhangsan to the relevant part of the article then. GeometryGirl (talk) 12:12, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
  • "classifiers have other limited uses" why 'limited'? do we have a reference?

Types

  • "The vast majority", "In everyday speech" -> not encyclopaedic wording '
    • I can change the first to just "majority"...simply 'most' is not very expressive and would almost be weasel-like. As for "in everyday speech", this seems perfectly encyclopedic to me, especially given that "in informal speech" is not quite accurate (the distinction is not one of formal vs. informal, but technical vs. non-technical). rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 18:17, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
  • "but the words grouped under this term are not all the same" -> this is a vacuous statement, every word is different. Maybe add an adverb, e.g. 'not all the same grammatically/semantically/...'
    • That was what the next sentence is for (at least, that's what I intended while writing this). Anyway, I have at least added 'types of', for "the types of words grouped under this term are not all the same". rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 18:17, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
  • "numerous specialized classifier dictionaries" -> 'numerous' is weasel
  • "range from "several dozen"[11] or "about 50",[12] to over 900." maybe explain the discrepancy with giving the context in which these citations came from. Also, the next sentence says most dictionaries include 120 to 150 classifiers, which doesn't fall in any of category described in the previous sentence!
    • I put this in a separate sentence on purpose, to give it more weight; I was trying to put the extremes in one sentence and then the most common estimate in its own. To make this clearer, I could remove the "about 50" to make it more obvious that these are just two extremes: from "several dozen"[11] to over 900[12]. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 18:17, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
  • "The number of classifiers and the complexity of the classifier system is evident in the fact that there exist numerous specialized "classifier dictionaries"." I object both the content and wording here. For the content, why would the numerous specialized dictionaries reflect upon the number or complexity of the classifier system? For the wording, "is evindent in the fact" is weasel.
    • What about something like "classifiers are so numerous, and the classifier system so complex, that they have given rise to specialized 'classifier dictionaries'"? I think the fact that classifier dictionaries exist is important to mention, and was mostly just trying to find the best place to work it in. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 18:34, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
  • any events (such as ballgames, fires, and movies) -> are fires and movies events? (or even ballgames?)
  • The sentence starting with "Qian Hu defines" is too long.
    • I could split it into two sentences (a short one about Hu, and a long one about Li & Thompson). Or I could just remove the whole thing about 场, which would make it a normal-length sentence. I think it is a somewhat illustrative example (and in the discussion above, User:Kwamikagami took some interest in it), but it may not be necessary to get the main point across. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 18:34, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
  • "bang ("pound") -> (bang, "pound") for consistentcy
  • "according to standard measures but by containers they come in" -> 'by the containers they come in'
  • "while mass-classifiers are nearly universal" contradicts the sentence " All languages, including English, have mass-classifiers"
    • Removed "nearly". Linguists are often hesitant to call anything "universal" (even things as basic as vowels, or nouns...there are some crazy languages that people claim have no vowels, and languages that people claim have no nouns), but that's mostly academic writing...for WP purposes I think this is fine. And "nearly universal" does seem to suggest that there are major examples of languages with no classifiers, which there aren't; really the only accurate wording would be something like "as far as we know, mass-classifiers appear in all the languages that we've really thought hard about and we can't imagine any language getting by without them", but of course that would be awfully weasely. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 18:34, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
  • "and mass-classifier being a sort of" -> 'sort of' is not encyclopaedic wording
  • "is often fuzzy" is borderline wording
  • "They posit that "count-classifier" and "mass-classifier" are the extremes of a continuum, with most words falling somewhere in between." I don't understand how classifiers can be 'in between'. Also, should 'words' be replaced by 'classifiers'?
    • Somewhere in between a 100% count-classifier and a 100% mass-classifier; this can be because it the classifier can be used in different ways with different words and thus plays the role of both mass- and count-classifier, or it can be because whether it's being used as one or the other is unclear. For example, in yi ke mi ("a grain of rice"), is "rice" a mass noun and ke is a mass-classifier dividing it into grain-sized pieces? Or does the word mi also refer to the grains of rice (in addition to rice in general) and ke being used as a count-classifier for small/round things—keeping in mind that ke is also often used with things that clearly are count nouns, such as bullets. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 18:34, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Relation to nouns

  • What are "geographical features"?
    • Changed to "mountains", which is mostly what this was referring to. (Hills and islands, at least, also take this classifier, but I think 'mountains' covers it well enough.)
  • "Even further subdivisions" -> 'even', 'further' and 'sub-' all mean more or less the same thing
  • "i.e. box and book are not related in meaning" -> i.e. should be e.g.
  • "include categories of shape..." -> 'include the categories of shape'
  • maybe link animacy
  • "and function (tools, vehicles, machines)" are tools, vehicles or machines functions?
    • I think this refers to functions things perform. For example, most tools use 把 (a general classifier for tools, which probably came about because you can hold them in your hand), most vehicles use 辆 (general classifier for vehicles), and most machines use 台 (general classifier for machines). The point is that these things aren't really grouped by physical characteristics per se, since a lot of them have physical characteristics in common...it's more about grouping things by the functions they perform (ie, all things that you drive are grouped together, etc.). "Function" is the word used in Tai (1994). rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 18:07, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
  • "some classifier-noun pairings are entirely arbitrary" -> remove 'entirely'
  • arbitrariness (used 3 times in just one paragraph) is a bit of a heavy word (as in clunky)
    • I'm not sure of any better words to use. "Arbitrariness" might be somewhat jargony—it's a word that people use regularly within this field, although it might sound like a made-up word to most people. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 18:08, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

GeometryGirl (talk) 14:49, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

High-level comments (i.e. regarding the stucture)

Latest comment: 14 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Now that I have gone through -- and digested -- the article in some detail, I realise the structure of the article can be improved. Here are problems and suggestions:

  • The 'Count-classifiers and mass-classifiers' section should maybe be split in two because it is too long and slightly messy. The introduction of the section 'Types' can explain in general terms the conundrum between the two types, with each subsection 'Count-classifiers' and 'Mass-classifiers' going into the details of the matter.
  • The section 'Usage' is more grammatical than anything else. Can we rename it to 'Grammatical usage' or 'Syntax' (I prefer the latter).
  • In conjunction with the previous comment, I would rename the awkward-sounding title 'Relation to nouns' to 'Usage', which I think is more appropriate.
  • The 'Purpose' section seems very ad-hoc to me, coming after all the rest, instead of being distilled in various places of the article. A symptom of this is that the 'Variation in usage' subsection has a lot pertaining to the 'Purpose' section. In the 'Purpose' section I see two types of information: a "cognitive" part, and a "grammatical/stylistic" part. I think the "cognitive part" goes well in the 'Count-classifiers' section, with the "grammatical/stylistic" part in the 'Relation with nouns' section. If you don't like spreading the information accross the article, I would propose to clearly separate and further expand the two parts.

What do you think? Some of these comments suggest relatively high-scale changes but I think it is definitely worth it. GeometryGirl (talk) 21:39, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Here is a draft of the plan:

1 Syntax
1.1 General syntax
1.2 Specialized constructions

2 Types
2.1 Count-classifiers
2.2 Mass-classifiers
2.3 Verbal classifiers

3 Usage and purpose
3.1 Categories and prototypes
3.2 Neutralization
3.3 Variation in usage

GeometryGirl (talk) 21:48, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

  • I think calling the first section "syntax" might be unnecessarily intimidating for some readers (if the intro isn't already intimidating enough ;) ). The main reason I added this section is because there's really no point discussing the deep stuff about classifiers unless the reader fully understands what they are, where they occur, etc; it wasn't so much meant to be an in-depth syntax discussion as just a collection of examples so that for the rest of the article it would be clear what we're dealing with. (Another reason is that, this being Wikipedia, I bet readers come sometimes just to get help on their intro Chinese homework.) Anyway, I think "Usage" is an acceptable title, given that is pedagogical connotation is precisely that: prescriptive descriptions of how and when you should use a particular grammar construction.
  • I agree that the count-classifier vs. mass-classifier section has gotten big. On the other hand, it would be difficult to split them in any comfortable way, as you can't really discuss one without discussing the other. If we just split it paragraph by paragraph, right now we would have one very short section on count-classifiers (just a few sentences), then one section on mass-classifiers, then that final paragraph (comparing both) with nowhere to go.
  • As for verbal classifiers...this used to be in its own section, but I moved it out because their status as an special subclass of classifiers, while widely used in literature as recently as a couple years ago, is questionable (see my discussion with User:Kwamikagami a few sections above). On the other hand, at least now this section has enough text to be somewhat worthwhile as a section, so I don't have strong feelings either way about where to put it.
  • I agree that "relation to nouns" is an awkward title, but I think "usage" is also awkward (not to mention I still like that title on the section where it's currently being used) and misses out on the main point of this section. The vast majority of research on classifiers, I would say, revolves around the relationship between classifiers and the nouns they classify. I.e., how nouns get lumped together, what kind of classifiers exist (the very subdivisions that are argued about--mass- and count-classifiers, nominal and verbal classifiers, etc. etc.--are based on this relationship), and how people, when given a noun, choose which classifier to stick on it.
  • As for the purpose section... the two different parts of it (cognitive vs. stylistic) are meant to contrast with one another, which is why I put them together in one section. It is possible, though, that it's not necessary to have a purpose section at all (the question of "why do classifiers exist" is not that widely written about, I don't think), although I'm not sure then where I'd put the stuff about Li Wendan's study (it's relevant in the Usage section--and is mentioned there already--but it's also relevant to the 'purpose' stuff and can't really be discussed in that way until the whole "relation with nouns" thing has been discussed). rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 23:02, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Comments

Latest comment: 14 years ago34 comments4 people in discussion

Unencyclopeadic words/wordings:
-'thing'
-'something'
-'and so on with'

GeometryGirl (talk) 15:07, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

  • I've removed "and so on with" and a few instances of "thing" words when possible. In many cases, though, I used these on purpose. First of all, "thing" is a less specific term than more formal-sounding words like "item" or "object" that I could use, and since classifiers can be used with many things (not just physical 'items' and 'objects') I wanted to use as general a term as possible. Also, I wanted to keep the article from getting bogged down in jargon or having too dry of a tone; it might be accurate to say "noun" or "object" all the time, but it would make the article more difficult to read and less inviting (just try searching the page for "thing" and saying "noun" or "object" in its place every time—it sounds dry even to me, a linguist). But anyway, I have it down to about 5 instances of "things" in the whole article now (a few times when they're used in parallel structure, such as "x classifier for x thing, y classifier for y thing, z classifier for z thing", I counted them as one, since in parallel structure like that it would be awkward to switch up the words for no reason), so hopefully this concern will be allayed. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 23:15, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Some more comments: —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.149.19.123 (talk) 11:39, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

  • "the mass-classifier 盒 (hé, "box") may be used with anything in a box, such as cigarettes or books"
The phrasing suggests that cigarettes and books come by default in a box. While this is most often the case for cigarettes, it is not for books. Anyway, I don't see why examples are necessary or relevant; tangerines and light-bulbs could may come boxes as well.
  • The main reason for using examples was to show how two things which use separate count-classifiers can use the same mass-classifier, which I think is important to expressing the difference between the two. It was not meant to be suggested these are "defaults"—default has nothing to do with the mass-CL use, which is precisely the point: you can measure anything with these CLs. 盒 hé could be used for boxes of books, boxes of computers, boxes of bouncy balls, boxes of monkeys, or anything. Likewise, "books" could be measured with any word like this... a box full of books, a room full of books, a boat full of books, a bag full of books, etc. I think originally I had this sentence worded "may be used with anything that happens to be in a box", but a past reviewer thought that was unencyclopedic wording or something. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 15:40, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
  • Ok. The wording "that happens to be" avoids ambiguity, but we may be able to find something even better. As for the examples, it is probably best to avoid cigarettes, since they come (by default) in boxes! What about a wording like "盒 may be used to count boxes of objects, as in 一盒苹果 (yi he pingguo, "A box of apples")"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by GeometryGirl (talk • contribs) 16:22, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
  • I have no problem with exchanging "cigarettes" for another example. I wouldn't go with apples because, to the best of my knowledge, they only use 个 (when being counted individually), and I would prefer to use an example that also uses a specialized classifier so that I can point out how they use the same mass-CL but different count-CL. Light bulbs, which you pointed out above, would work for this: 灯泡 apparently uses 盏 zhǎn. The only issue with that is that it's a two-syllable word whereas the book example is one-syllable, but I can try to think of a way to tweak them—what I'll try now is replacing book with 教材 (textbook), which uses the same classifier. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 19:22, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
  • "Chinese has a large number of nominal classifiers; estimates of the number (mass-classifiers as well as count-classifiers) in Mandarin range from "several dozen"[11] or "about 50",[12] to over 900.[13]"
The numbers come as "out of the blue". Some explanation of the discrepancies should be given.
  • There is a bit of explanation in the lede, where it says "depending on how they are counted"—these definitions vary because some include all types of classifiers/'measure words' (even verbal, compound, 些, and others), some include only count-CL, etc.; some might count traditional/simplified as separate (for example, simplified 只 corresponds to at least 3 traditional classifiers) while some may have counted them together; and, most importantly, the definition of 'classifier' has changed over time, so older books (like Chao) have different numbers. I don't know how much of these specifics I can include without a source, but I could add a footnote explaining some of these things and basically repeating some of the stuff from the History section, which talks about the changing definition of "classifier". rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 15:44, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
Ok, so maybe only give the numbers for the current definition, and leaves the other numbers in the notes (or somewhere else). Also, the sentence says "estimates of the number (mass-classifiers as well as count-classifiers)" which doesn't include verbal classifiers and other non-mass-classifier and non-count-classifiers.
  • I've made this series of edits to rework that paragraph, I think it also addresses several of your comments below. I didn't move the whole thing into a note yet since I think that would leave very little in the prose (it would probably become so short it would need to be merged into another paragraph), but I tried to clearly set off the 120–150 estimate from the list of "out of the blue" numbers, to make it clear to the reader that these are the most 'current' or relevant estimates, whereas the others are there more for background information. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 19:56, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
  • "Regular dictionaries include 120 to 150,[14] although it is likely that only about two dozen of these are in everyday, informal use.[15]"
What do you mean by "likely"? What does the source say?
  • The source says it is definitely the case that only these 20-some classifiers are in common use. I added "likely" just as a way to soften it up, so I wasn't just reporting this one claim as fact (since I'm sure there are people who disagree with Erbaugh's finding, have issues with her methodology or the corpus she used—which I think was just her own sample collected for that paper—,or whatever things like that). I could change "likely" to "possible"; mainly I just wanted to avoid saying "so-and-so claims that..." because I already say that a lot throughout the article. Judging from my personal experience, I think her estimate of 20-some "core classifiers" is pretty reasonable (although I don't agree with all the ones she chooses to include in that group), which is probably why I went with "likely" rather than some other softener. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 19:56, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
  • "The number of classifiers and the complexity of the classifier system is evident in the fact that there exist specialized "classifier dictionaries"."
Change 'number' to 'amount' or 'quantity' (this is the third time you use number in the same paragraph)
  • "The number of classifiers and the complexity of the classifier system is evident in the fact that there exist specialized "classifier dictionaries"."
"Evident" is weasel. Also phrasing suggests that the existence of classifier dictionaries imply a large amount of classifiers and a complex classifier system. This is rather strong and weasely. Maybe rephrase to something lighter such as "reflects in the existence of classifier dictionaries".
  • Simpler still would be "classifiers are so numerous that specialized classifier dictionaries have been published". I think I had a wording like that before one of the reviews and it got changed somewhere along the lines, though I dont' remember why (it might have been that a reviewer didn't like that it was implying a causal relationship, or something like that). rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 19:56, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
  • "classifier dictionaries"
Why quotation marks?
  • "While mass-classifiers do not necessarily bear any semantic relationship to the noun with which they are used (e.g., box and book are not related in meaning, but one can still say "a box of books"), count-classifiers do."
This sentence contradicts "Some classifier-noun pairings are arbitrary"
  • I don't think it contradicts; only some pairings are arbitrary, many are not (ie, many do have a relationship). Also, these sentences have different purposes. The first is intended to explain the difference between mass-CL and count-CL, where the other is to get at more nitty-gritty details behind how count-CL work. Thus, it makes sense for them to have slightly different focuses. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 15:29, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
  • "This occurs especially often among children[54] and aphasics (individuals with damage to language-relevant areas of the brain),[52][55] although normal speakers also neutralize frequently."
Why are children and aphasics abnormal? Maybe most of the population is a child or suffers from aphasia. Add a reference; or better, chose a more politically correct phrasing like "although other speakers neutralize frequently" (note that I think 'also' is useless here).
  • I don't think this is un-PC; in linguistics, at least, a "normal speaker" is considered to be one with a fully-developed language and no brain damage, mental retardation, or other deficiencies. Much research talks about a distinction between "child language" and "adult language" (which is assumed to be the "normal", or default, thing that we mean when we refer to language). Likewise, Kathleen Ahrens' paper cited in this article refers to "Classifier production in normals and aphasics". When I say "normal speakers", I'm not saying children and aphasics are bad or abnormal people; I'm just saying they are not "average" speakers of the language in a linguistic sense. And they definitely aren't the majority of the population, not in any population I know of but certainly not in the Chinese-speaking population. As for "also," I think this is necessary to express that it's not just them, but everyone, who does classifier neutralization; if you read it without the "also", then it sounds (especially with the "although") that normal and child/aphasic speakers are being contrasted, whereas actually I'm comparing them (pointing out that they both neutralize classifiers a lot). rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 15:50, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure "normal" is enough of an "official" jargon term to warrant its own article, and thus I would feel weird about redlinking something that I don't think will ever have an article (not to mention it would just draw more attention to the word "normal", and hence to the implication that children and aphasics aren't normal). That being said, though, I won't object if someone else adds it; it's just that I personally don't think it's necessary. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 20:03, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
  • "In other words, when asked what the appropriate count-classifier is for a given word, speakers will answer correctly, but in regular speech they are very likely to use the general classifier"
What does this add to the preceding sentence "It has been reported that most speakers know the appropriate classifiers for the words they are using and believe, when asked, that those classifiers are obligatory, but nevertheless use 个 without even realizing it in actual speech."?
  • Probably nothing; I was just trying to make sure the point was being made clearly (which is why, in general, this article has lots of examples and lots of "in other words"es, especially after complicated parts). But if you feel it's redundant, then the point must have been clear enough already, so I've removed it. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 20:03, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
  • "On the other hand, count-classifiers are not inherently mandatory"
What do you mean by "inherently"? What does the source say? Do you mean that they are redundant?
  • By "not inherently mandatory" I mean they aren't needed, in of themselves, for communication (unlike mass-CL, which by their very definition are pretty much necessary—every language needs some way to measure quantities of things, and mass-CL are the units for doing that). The three refs at the end of the sentence are actually more for the other bit of the sentence (the claim that all languages have mass-CL, but not all have count-CL), although Wang p. 1 does say this: "All languages need measures to indicate quantity.... however, only some languages need classifiers." (The "all languages need measures" is getting at the "inherently mandatory" bit for mass-CL: they are necessary for communication, by their very nature. While the rest of this doesn't specifically say what I was saying in the article, i.e. that count-CL are not necessary by their very nature, I think it's at least strongly implied). Anyway, this all should be distinguished from "redundancy", which is not what I was trying to claim there: something may not be necessary by its very nature (like mass-CLs are) but still become a necessary part of a language anyway. For example, languages don't need tense and aspect markings like English has (past tense "-ed", etc.), but many have them; someone could, if they really wanted to, argue that these things are "redundant" to indicators like context and adverbials, but I imagine most English speakers would say that past tense "-ed" is necessary for getting their point across and is not "redundant". rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 20:16, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
  • Sometimes the translation of Chinese words and sentences are in quotation marks, and sometimes not. This should be made consistent. (I prefer with no quotation marks.)
    • This is intentional. The literal, word-by-word glosses (for example, things like one-CL-fish or me-possessive car) don't have quotes; the approximate English translations do. So, in lines where there are both glosses and translations, you'll see both with and without quotations, as in

      我去过三次北京 (wǒ qù-guo sān cì Běijīng, I go-PAST three-CL Beijing, "I have been to Beijing three times")

      I tried to use word-by-word glosses as little as possible here, especially after the first couple sections, since I figured they might be cumbersome or intimidating for readers without a linguistic background. Nevertheless, they are necessary sometimes, to help the reader show where the translation came from (especially in more complicated sentences like the one above—for a reader who doesn't know Chinese and is expecting English-like grammar and word order, if there were no glosses it might be difficult to see where exactly the classifier phrase is within the sentence, and how things are working). rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 15:29, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
  • "One commonly-held view of its etymology is that it was originally a noun referring to bamboo stalks"
Ungainly. Is "Some suggest it was originally a noun for bamboo stalks" better?
  • Changed. In the process, though, I had to tweak your previous rewording (to make 个 the focus of the sentence preceding sentence... so that this one would read as being about the etymology of 个, not the etymology of the general classifier). I added "historicaly" at the beginning of the sentence; it might be a bit redundant, but it was the best way I could think of to keep from starting the sentence with 个. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 20:16, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

GeometryGirl (talk) 13:59, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

  • In the introduction where the Chinese word for the classifier is written in both traditional and simplified, the first term (liang) has been switched.

Silverflight8 (talk) 01:40, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Main Page Typo

Latest comment: 14 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Hi. On Wikipedia's main page, the tease for this article has this sentence: "There are as many as 150 different classifiers, and many nouns are associated with certain ones—for example, flat objects such as tables use the classifier zhāng, whereas long objects such lines use tiáo." I think "whereas long objects such lines use tiáo" should be "whereas long objects such /as/ lines use tiáo". Unfortunately I don't know how to change it. --Smoggyrob | Talk 01:10, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out. In the future, you can report main page errors to WP:ERRORS, and might get a faster response there (I was out playing badminton for a couple hours so there may have been no one watching this talk page). rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 03:21, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
Latest comment: 14 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

The first paragraph of this article uses the word "foreground" which links to the article "focus", like this: foreground. However the article for focus doesn't even use the word "foreground", so folks who click the link looking to have the term defined are just SOL. I will go ahead and remove the wikilink unless anyone has an objection. 76.115.173.255 (talk) 18:52, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure linking to focus (linguistics) is even accurate. I can only read the abstract of the cited reference, Li 2000, but it looks like that paper is about the use of classifiers to introduce salient and thus potentially topical discourse referents. That doesn't fit the most common use of the term 'focus' in linguistics, which has (something) to do with what a sentence is asserting. (Of course, linguists have used 'focus' in a bunch of different ways; it's a terminological nightmare.) --Chris Johnson (talk) 09:25, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Changes to lede

Latest comment: 10 years ago22 comments2 people in discussion

I have reverted these two edits. While I think there is some good stuff to be found in those changes, they're overall not an improvement. Firstly, mentions important parts of the main text (such as the pragmatics of quantifiers, and the category vs. prototype discussion) are removed from the lede, which goes against WP:MoS: the lede should introduce all the main points of the article. Secondly, things have been moved around in a way that makes it flow poorly--for example, the last paragraph suddenly jumps from talking about history to talking about usage, and the second paragraph suddenly jumps without transition from discussion of variation to a non sequitur statement about which classifier is most common.

Given how much this lede has been vetted in the past, a more constructive approach to improving it would be to individually point out and discuss each part of the lede that you think could be changed, rather than rewriting large swaths of it in one fell swoop. See, for example, some of the point-by-point discussions above. Best, rʨanaɢ (talk) 13:06, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Or alternatively, instead of reverting all the changes, you could just deal with the particular points that you object to. The version you've restored is vastly inferior in my opinion, if the aim is to introduce the subject in a clear and logical way. It talks of technical issues of pragmatics and prototypes, which few readers will be able to understand out of context, but fails even to give a clear explanation of what these things (classifiers) are and do. And the flow of ideas is far poorer, and there are apparent errors which you've restored without even thinking. Not very helpful at all, sorry. W. P. Uzer (talk) 13:55, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
Look, I know you are new here, but there is a process to doing these things. Please read WP:Edit warring and WP:BRD. You boldly made changes, but since they have been disputed you should not keep making them; the appropriate action is to have a discussion here about the changes you would like to make. I explicitly said above that we can have that discussion here, and I tried to be civil about it, but you just ignored this. Also, calling another editor stupid is never a productive way to edit an article. For now I am reverting back to the status-quo version of the article, and I will respond to your points here, one by one, so that we can have the discussion I originally suggested. rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:18, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
Please read WP:BOLD and WP:OWN. We should be working together to make this article better. Restoring mistakes just to teach another editor a lesson is really, in my opinon, stupid, and is obviously counterproductive. W. P. Uzer (talk) 14:22, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
Who ever said I was restoring mistakes to "teach you a lesson"? I am restoring the earlier version of the article to follow the standard protocol for dispute resolution, which I gave you a link to. Please read it. rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:31, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
You are clearly saying "I'm in charge here, you'll do what I say." I note you didn't revert your own recent change to the status quo version. This is how it comes across anyway - sorry if that wasn't what was in your head, but you must understand that when you behave in this way, it seems arrogant and doesn't help create a cooperative atmosphere. W. P. Uzer (talk) 14:47, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Responses to points raised

I'd like to return to the matter of improving the "lede". Currently it still seems quite confused, for example, getting bogged down in unnecessary technical distinctions early on, giving an initial definition that is in fact empty of meaning and no real help to anyone (when in fact no definition is needed, since that is a matter for the articles on classifiers and measure words generally), omitting explanation of basic facts, not always maintaining a logical flow of ideas, etc. I'm working on an improved version in my sandbox here. It doesn't omit any of the information the lede currently contains (except, I think, the bit about morphemes and words, which is avoided here if the job of definition is delegated to those general articles). Comments and suggestions invited. W. P. Uzer (talk) 09:45, 20 September 2013 (UTC) User:W. P. Uzer/sandbox

It's going to take me some time to review this. rʨanaɢ (talk) 13:10, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
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