On numeratives (or: Why “numeral classifiers” are not kinds of “classifiers”)

“Classifiers” are fascinating and have often been discussed, especially for Asian languages, but also for languages of Mesoamerica and South America and elsewhere. But what exactly is a “classifier”? I have long wondered about this, and recently I published a paper on numeratives. Why don’t I call them “numeral classifiers”?

The reason is that I cannot think of a good definition of “classifier”. ChatGPT does not hallucinate when it tells us that numeral classifiers are the type of classifier that is most widely discussed:

But how can we define “classifier” in such a way that a “numeral classifier” is a kind of classifier? Aikhenvald (2017) defines “classifiers” as follows, and includes gender markers in them:

And indeed, gender markers and classifiers are not really distinguishable, as has been known since Amazonian nominal classification systems were first examined in some detail. Seifart & Payne (2007: 383-384) have observed that the dichotomy between “noun classes/genders” and “classifiers” that was set up by authors such as Dixon (1986) cannot be applied to these languages:

Thus, we do not have a definition of “classifier” that is distinct from “nominal classification marker”, and as a result, gender markers of European languages (e.g. Spanish l-os nuev-os libros ‘the new books’, l-as nuev-as mesas ‘the new tables’) would be classifiers, or Mandarin numeral classifiers would be gender markers (depending on which terminology one chooses).

Thus, it seems to me that the best solution is to drop the term “classifier”, and to focus on “numeral classifiers” in Asian languages (where they are best known) and what they share. In non-technical materials for teaching Chinese, numeratives are typically called measure words”, as in:

“Numerals are always used with measure words with a noun, or to emphasise a specific number. For example: 一条裙子 (yī tiáo qúnzi) a dress” (source).

(For teaching Japanese and Korean, they are apparently called “count(er) words”, as noted in the Wikipedia article on “measure words”.)

However, “measure word” is too broad, because this term includes forms such as “kilo” or “bottle” (as in “a bottle of water”), and these are not intended to be “numeral classifiers”.

Or maybe they are? Maybe English has numeral classifiers? Many authors distinguish between “sortal numeral classifiers” (as in Mandarin tiáo qúnzi [one NUMV dress]), and “mensural numeral classifiers” (as in English two glasses of water, e.g. David Gil in his 2005 WALS chapter; see also the World Atlas of Classifier Languages).

However, when one includes “mensural classifiers”, then most (or all) languages have numeral classifiers, and this would be a very unintuitive thing to say. The terminology is really confusing…

Thus, we need a way out, and I suggest that we can distinguish between numeratives (as in Mandarin tiáo qúnzi ‘one dress’) and mensuratives (as in English two glasses of water). The details are explained in the new paper in the festschrift for Ekateria Gruzdeva (St. Petersburg/Helsinki).

Here is the proposed definition, which I explain in detail in the paper:

References

Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2017. A typology of noun categorization devices. In Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. & Dixon, R. M. W (eds.), The Cambridge handbook of linguistic typology, 361–404. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316135716)

Dixon, R. M. W. 1986. Noun classes and noun classification in typological perspective. In Craig, Colette Grinevald (ed.), Noun classes and categorization, 105–112. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Gil, David. 2005. Numeral classifiers. In Haspelmath, Martin & Dryer, Matthew S & Gil, David & Comrie, Bernard (eds.), The world atlas of language structures, 226–229. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (https://wals.info/chapter/55)

Seifart, Frank & Payne, Doris L. 2007. Nominal classification in the North West Amazon: Issues in areal diffusion and typological characterization. International Journal of American Linguistics 73(4). 381–387.


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Martin Haspelmath (November 20, 2025). On numeratives (or: Why “numeral classifiers” are not kinds of “classifiers”). Diversity Linguistics Comment. Retrieved December 13, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/156f4


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