Analysis Of Collective Noun Modified By Individual Measure Word

This article will illustrate that some collective nouns can be modified by the individual measure word in Chinese on the basis of a large number of linguistic facts, though it is commonly acknowledged to be definitely impossible. The article provides detailed analysis of the syntactic and semantic features of the collective nouns modified by the individual measure word, including the "noun + measure word" pattern, compound pattern, and total pattern sequentially, with the methods of combining form and meaning, and description and explanation, and statistics. Next are the main points:1 The syntactic structure of the collective nouns modified by the individual measure word could be: "numeral + measure word + noun", "yi + measure word + noun," "mei + measure word + noun", etc.2 Most nouns with "noun + measure word" pattern are collective nouns and can be modified by the individual measure word which serves to bisyllablize the nouns and indicate the individual meaning of them.3 The syntactic structure of some collective nouns with compound pattern modified by the individual measure word is "numeral + measure word + noun", indicating to count by many units, while the syntactic structure of others is "yi + measure word + noun", indicating to count by single unit.4 Some collective nouns with total pattern can be individualized in sentence indicating single unit by using "yi + individual measure word" pattern..5 The collective nouns can be divided into two kinds: the one that can be individualized and the one that can not, based on the fact that some group nouns can be modified by the individual measure word.6 What is indicated should be the single unit, not the total units, when the collective nouns are modified by the individual measure word, which is valuable for the dictionary to explain them in detail by adding the individual meaning.