A Glimpse of Human Categorization: A Corpus-based Study of English Measure Words
Date Issued
2009
Date
2009
Author(s)
Tso, Ru-Ping
Abstract
Categorization is one of the basic cognitive activities conducted by human beings in everyday life. This study is an investigation of the relation between human categorization and English measure words. Thoroughly analyzing 28 English measure words, we have touched upon the issues on distinguishing between the measure word and the classifier, functions of English measure words, and the taxonomy of them.nalyzing English measure words blade, sheet, loaf, slice, piece, leap, brood, litter, flight, crowd, pride, colony, pack, group, herd, flock, cluster, clump, swarm, wad, line, coil, string, row, stack, heap, pile, and bunch with aid of the English Sketch Engine and the Suggested Upper Merged Ontology, we found that some English measure words are functionally similar to classifiers. As a result, it is claimed that English has classifier-like measure words regardless of English being considered as a non-classifier language in previous literature (Allan 1977b).he observation of classifier-like measure words inspired us to reconsider the distinction between measure words and classifiers. While many studies (Allan 1977b, Tai 1990, Ahrens1994) attempted to make a binary distinction between measure words and classifiers, the present study proposes that the relation between classifiers and measure words should be seen as a continuum with fuzzy boundaries. There are true measure words and classifier-like measure words in English.he classifier-to-measure word continuum proposed in this study demonstrates that categorization may not always result in clear-cut boundaries between categories. Fuzziness is necessary for human cognition to understand and conceptualize the world. Categorization is also a matter of perspective, in which different perspectives would result in various forms of taxonomies of entities.he English measure words chosen for analyses are all used subjectively according to the speaker’s perspective. However, there is another group of measure words that are objectively used, including standard measures of quantity and quality. Though all are known as “measure words,” their functional statuses vary. We, therefore, suggest there is a need to differentiate between these two groups of measure words, namely objective measure words and subjective measure words. Allan’s (1977a, b) taxonomy failed to point out this difference, so this study re-categorized English measure words, and proposed a new taxonomy.nglish measure words, unlike Chinese or Thai, do not require classifiers or measure words before noun phrases. However, measure words are frequently used by English speakers. Considering language economy and efficiency, we wonder why speakers would bother to choose and make use of English measure words if not obligated. This study suggests that the additional information given eases the process of communication, and categorization plays an important role during the cognitive activity of choosing the appropriate measure word.inally, through the process of investigating these 28 English measure words, it is found that the reliability of the search results is still questionable, because it is not guaranteed that all the data provided by the corpora are correct or relevant, which would then affect the credibility of the follow-up analyses. In addition to the usage of corpus, applying the Suggested Upper Merged Ontology to the present study gave forth to the finding that SUMO and WordNet may not cover all aspects of how human perceive and conceptualize the world. Hence, though computational tools aid the process of data collection, manual check is still suggested.
Subjects
categorization
measure word
classifier
taxonomy
corpus linguistics
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