Acceso usuarios
Niina Ning Zhang
When a classifier occurs with a numeral and an event-denoting expression, it is used as a unit to count events. The classifier is called a verbal classifier if the event-denoting expression is verbal, although the classifier itself is not verbal. This paper argues that a numeral and a verbal classifier have a spec-head relation, and the verbal expression is the complement. The proposal explains a number of syntactic generalizations of verbal classifiers in Mandarin Chinese. Like a frequentative adverb such as twice, a verbal classifier expression is either event-internal or event-external. The two types of classifiers have different possible positions in the language. The position contrasts are explained by different heights of the projection headed by a classifier. Theoretically, on the one hand, this research unifies the syntax of nominal and verbal numeral classifiers; and on the other hand, it explores the syntactic distinctions between event-internal and event-external verbal classifiers.
