Re: count words
| From: | Eric Christopherson <raccoon@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Saturday, August 7, 1999, 23:31 |
|---|
----- Original Message -----
From: J. Barefoot <ataiyu@...>
To: Multiple recipients of list CONLANG <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Thursday, August 05, 1999 4:45 PM
Subject: count words
> I was working on a dialect of Asiteya and it occured to me to ask before I
> proceed: Do count words/numerators/numeratives/counters, like in Chinese
and
> Japanese, have independant meanings, or are they just grammatical
operators?
In Japanese, at least, the counter words are written with characters which
usually have something to do with what's being counted -- the character for
"person" is used for counting people, the one for "sun" counts days, the one
for "leg" or "foot" counts pairs of footgear, the one for "wing" used for
counting birds, etc. On the other hand, the character for "book" is used for
counting long, cylindrical things. I'm not sure if the actual spoken words
actually correspond to words for what's being counted though.