A syntactic analysis on the classifier-noun construction in Chinese

摘要

The classifier-noun construction in Mandarin is different from the numeral-classifier-noun construction in the aspects of syntactic distribution and semantic interpretation. This paper analyzes the syntactic classifier-noun construction in the perspective of Generative Grammar. Under the discussion of the morphosyntactic property of Chinese classifiers, the paper argues that in the classifier-noun constructions, the classifier tends to develop toward the indefinite article which can be explained under the framework of DP.