Cov, the Underspecified Noun, and Syntactic Flexibility in Hmong
Author(s):
Ratliff, Martha
Format:
Journal article
Citation:
Journal Of The American Oriental Society, Volume 111, Issue 4 (1991-10). pp. 694-703.
Language:
English
Abstract:
Hmong (Miao) is a Southeast Asian language characterized by classifier constructions. As a rule, there can be only one classifier per noun phrase; however, there exists a class of seeming exceptions to this rule: when the collective classifier cov is used with a semantically underspecified noun, the unit classifier is retained. It is argued here that these are not truly exceptions, but that the unit classifier in this environment must be analyzed as the first member of a nominal compound. Syntactic flexibility is characteristic of the language as a whole, & is better supported than any of the following alternative analyses: (1) reformulation of the phrase structure rule for NPs, (2) the consistent analysis of unit-classifier/underspecified-noun collocations as nominal compounds, (3) the analysis of cov as a quantifier, or (4) the analysis of the classifiers that pattern with underspecified nouns as representing two homophonous lexical items, one a classifier & the other a noun, which are related through a process of "synchronic derivation." 28 References. Adapted from the source document