Plural Marking Of Classifie R Language

The thesis is mainly resolved to investigate two questions related to plural marking of classifier languages:(a) what are the similarities and differences of plural markers between classifier languages and non-classifier languages? (b) whether the definiteness feature of plurals is determined by plural markers?T The research on the first question is based on the comparison between Chinese plural maker-men and English plural morpheme -s. It is proved that their differences largely manifest in the following points. First of all, the way in which nouns get plural feature are varied. Furthermore, Chinese plural nouns could not function as a predicate but English plurals could. Moreover, -s is much more productive than-men. Another difference reflected in the internal order of Number Phrase projection in Chinese and English. Chinese pronouns and proper names can be followed but not preceded by quantity expression like number and classifier constituent, whereas Chinese common nouns could neither be preceded nor followed by quantity expression. In comparison, English plurals could be preceded by quantity expression like number and other quantifiers.In response to the second question, from typological perspective, the paper analyzes the origin of referential feature of plurals in classifier languages mainly taking Chinese for example. First, definiteness semantically differs from specificity. Definiteness is defined as identity of one object selected in the class of possible objects, but specificity relates to pre-established elements in the discourse. Second, the syntactic realization of definiteness and specificity varies. According to Rizzi's (2004) Split Complement Phrase, Complement could be divided into Focus Phrase, Topic Phrase and Finiteness Phrase. And Topic Phrase is higher than Finiteness Phrase at clausal level. Specificity is endowed to the head of Topic Phrase while definiteness heads Definite Phrase which corresponds to the clausal Finiteness Phrase. Plural marker acquiring definite reading has something to do with syntactic license condition, to be specific, plural marker is either licensed by determiner or quantifier. From the perspective of Minimalist Program, it is feature check of numeral and referentiality between plural marker and (in)definite marker that decide the (in)definite reading of plural nouns.