Author : Yongming Gao
Publisher :
Page : 188 pages
File Size : 35,2 MB
Release : 1998
Category : Categorization (Linguistics)
ISBN :
Mandarin Chinese is a numeral classifier language. In Chinese, a numeral classifier is a free morpheme that obligatorily precedes a noun in a phrase of counting, such as "one stick" and "two tables." The Chinese equivalent of such phrases would be "one long-thing stick" and "two flat-thing tables," where "long-thing" and "flat-thing" represent classifier morphemes. Many believe that numeral classifiers define conceptual categories. Five experiments were conducted to test two hypotheses about their mental representation. Experiments 1, 2, 3 and 4 tested the main hypothesis that there are three different types of Chinese numeral classifier categories associated with three different types of mental representation. Twenty-four classifiers representing the three types were selected for the study. Native Chinese speakers were used as subjects. Experiment 1 generated grammaticality, typicality, and frequency ratings for nouns classified by the three types of classifiers. In Experiment 2, subjects listed central features for each classifier category studied. Experiment 3 reversed the experimental task in Experiment 2, asking subjects to identify the appropriate classifier categories based on the most frequently rated features generated in Experiment 2. Experiment 4 engaged subjects in judging how much each noun embodies the central idea of the classifier category. Data from these four experiments indicate that the three types of classifier categories have very different underlying organizing principles in their mental representation. Type 1 categories are characterized by a set of defining features, Type 2 categories are prototype-based, and Type 3 categories are Mentally represented by arbitrary associations. Experiment 5 was designed to test the second hypothesis that classifier categories may facilitate people's memory storage and recall. Both native Chinese speakers and English speakers served as subjects, with the English speakers being the control group. The data provided limited support for the idea that classifier categories act as an organization device in memory.