Linguistic Differences
Some languages, such as Mandarin Chinese, treat all nouns as mass nouns, and need to make use of a noun classifier to add numerals and other quantifiers. The following examples are of nouns which, while seemingly innately countable, are still treated as mass nouns:
- 那个人吃完了 (nà gè rén chī wán le) - "That unit person has eaten", "That person has eaten"
- 那三个人吃完了(nà sān gè rén chī wán le) - "Those three unit person' have eaten", "Those three people have eaten"
- 她有七本书 (tā yŏu qī bĕn shū) - "She has seven unit book", "She has seven books."
A classifier, therefore, implies that the object(s) referred to are countable in the sense that the speaker intends them to be enumerated, rather than considered as a unit (regardless of quantity). Notice that the classifier changes as the unit being counted changes.
Words such as "milk" or "rice" are not so obviously countable entities, but they can be counted with an appropriate unit of measure in both English and Mandarin (e.g., "glasses of milk" or "spoonfuls of rice").
The use of a classifier is similar to, but not identical with, the use of units of measurement to count groups of objects in English. For example, in "three shelves of books", "shelves" is used as a unit of measurement.
Read more about this topic: Count Noun
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