This article examines the distribution and interpretational variability of bare nouns and [classifier+noun] phrases in Cantonese and Mandarin. We argue that bare nouns are never bare in structure and that [classifier+noun] phrases may have more structure than just Classifier Phrase. We show that the lack of articles and number morphology in Cantonese/Mandarin leads to many interesting differences between Chinese-type languages and English-/Italian-type languages.

Cantonese, classifiers, count nouns, Mandarin, mass nouns, noun interpretation, NP structure
This content is only available as a PDF.
© 1999 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1999
You do not currently have access to this content.