英文摘要 |
This note tries to clarify an empirical issue: whether the association marker de in Mandarin Chinese is a numeral classifier. There are important syntactic contrasts between de and numeral classifiers. The former may not follow a numeral, occur at the left-edge of a nominal, follow a demonstrative immediately, be reduplicated, but a numeral classifier may do all of these. Moreover, de may follow an adjective, a clause, a pronoun, or a proper name, but a numeral classifier never does so. Furthermore, de and a numeral classifier can surface next to each other, indicating their different syntactic positions. We conclude that the two kinds of formatives are syntactically different. |