In this research paper, I will explore and analyse the role of classifiers in Thai language. I will do this by investigating the semantic, syntactic and aspects of classifier construction in Thai. Alongside this I will analyse some data set in order to prove my arguments as well as draw literature from linguists that have analysed this phenomenon previously. Furthermore, I will critically analyse two phenomenons, namely the repeater classifiers and the widespread use of the classifier “tua” in Thai language- and whether there are general rules in its occurrence. Then, I will compare the similarities or differences of the roles of classifiers between Thai and other South-East Asian languages. Finally, I will draw a conclusion on its importance and unique qualities that it adds to the Thai language.
I was motivated to pick Thai for my research paper for several reasons, but mainly because it is my mother tongue and yet I have come to realise that I know very little about the origins of the language and how it came about. The first few years of my life I have been brought up purely using the Thai language, however pretty soon after that I was put into an International School and therefore used English as my main language. Thus, I have become accustomed to using English and written Thai has become less significant in my life. Therefore, my curiosity for the language sparked there.
Firstly, I will briefly introduce the background and history of the language, then focus specifically on the relevance of classifiers. Thai is an S-V-O subject (Subject-Verb-Object) , like English, and is a part of the Tai language family, which includes other languages such as Lao and Burmese. It is a branch of the Kra-Dai language, a family of tonal languages that are mostly found in South East Asia. The Thai alphabet consists of forty-four consonants and fifteen vowels, and since it is a tonal language, it has four tone markers (่ ้ ๊ ๋) (low, high, rising, failing) to signify the change in tone. This is a major part of Thai since most second language learners find it difficult to distinguish between the contrasting tones and a slight error or change in the tonal pronunciation will alter the meaning of the word.
Classifiers are a type of noun categorisation device, they appear in forms of words or affixes which accompany nouns that need to be counted (Aikhenvald, 2015). They are sometimes referred to as ‘counter words’ or ‘measure words’. It is comparable to a form of grammatical ‘agreement’ that we commonly find in English like the ‘subject-verb-agreement’ (Slayden, n.d.). A tangible example of English classifiers are “three loaves of bread.” However, classifiers are not a big prat of the English language at all. In comparison, it has made me come to realise how classifiers play a crucial role in the grammar of East Asian languages, for example: Japanese, Burmese, Korean, Chinese, and Thai.
Syntactic structure of Thai classifiers
According to Allan (1977), there are altogether four different types of classifier languages. They include: numeral classifier language, concordial classifier language, predicate classifier language, and intra-locative classifier language. Thai is identified as being a numeral classifier language. Some of the features of this type of classifier language is that classifiers are considered to be an obligatory element when expressing quantity. Furthermore, in Thai, the classifiers appear in deictic or anaphoric expressions alongside with expressions of quantity.
Examples of classifiers in Thai:
Examples of deictic, anaphoric, and expressions of quantity:
the reason why there are multiple definitions of the Thai word ‘tua’ is because the classifier can be used for various categories of items and thus can be interpreted relatively freely depending on the context of the sentence. This phenomenon will be explored further in the paper.
Furthermore, based on the data set I have mentioned above as well as from my own experience with Thai I have come to realise the general syntactic structure of classifiers in Thai. Generally, classifiers appear immediately after the noun they are referring to, but when specifically mentioning numbers or quantities, the classifier appears after the number itself. However, classifiers can also appear as the head of a noun phrase when the noun is understood from the context. For example: “song-sii luang” (ชองสีเหลือง) (Clf(pouch)-yellow) “the yellow pack” (Deepadung, 1997).
Illustrated below is the general syntactic structure of classifiers in Thai using the example noun phrase: “Those three cute dogs”.
Now, I will investigate the structure of simple and complex Thai nominals using literature from Douglas Inis (2003). There are four conditions in which the author has identified the structure or the obligation of the classifier to be present in a noun phrase.
In the first case, like I have previously mentioned , the use of classifier becomes obligatory when a noun is accompanied by a numeral.
However, in the second scenario the use of it becomes optional when the noun is accompanied by an adjective or a demonstrative.
The third condition poses that classifiers are obligatory if a noun refers to a specific object in a noun phrase.
The difference between the two examples above is that “Maew-lek” doesn’t refer specifically to a group of small cats, just small cats in general. However, in the second example “Maew-tua-lek” (classifier is obligatory), the classifier adds meaning to the noun phrase since it implies singularity as well as conveying the fact that it is specifically to this small cat.
Finally, the last example of conditions in simple nominals poses that when only the demonstrative is present, the presence of a classifier in these noun phrases alters the meaning. The inclusion of a classifier in the noun phrase increases the specificity since it emphasises the fact that it is this very cat the speaker is referring to, whereas without it the phrase is more general.
Next, I will continue to investigate the syntactic structure of complex nominals in Thai. The examples below will illustrate my theory.
The example presented in this dataset shows the phenomenon where a noun phrase consists of numbers, adjectives and demonstratives. Moreover, they show the classifier ‘tua’ occurring twice, before the after the adjective. However, no matter what the demonstrative always occur in the last position. In my opinion, I believe that this truly demonstrates a unique characteristic of Thai classifiers where the classifier occur multiple times in a noun phrase, and it seems to be a phenomenon unique to Thai in comparison to other classifier languages in South East Asia (Singhapreecha, 2001). Semantic function of classifiers
Deepadung (1997) poses that Thai classifiers can be distinguished into four different categories. The first being ‘unit classifiers’ which includes classifiers that have a special relationship with a concrete noun, for example: ‘rod’ (รถ)(N) meaning car with the classifier ‘kun’ (คัน). Unit classifiers can also appear as the head of a compound concrete noun, for example, ‘baimaii’(ใบไม้) meaning leaves with the classifier ‘bai’ (ใบ). The second category are called ‘metric classifiers’, they bear no special relationship with a noun in contrast with the unit classifiers. moreover, classifiers in this category are usually used with a mass noun as a unit measurement, for example, “khao-saam-jaan” (rice-three-clf[plate]) meaning “three plates of rice”. Furthermore, the third category of classifiers are ‘general classifiers’, they can occur with several nouns and unlike metric or unit classifiers- have no relationship with concrete or mass nouns. An example of a general classifier are ‘an’ meaning ‘piece or item’, ‘khuu’ meaning ‘pair’, and ‘chanit’ meaning ‘type or kind’. The final category the author introduced was imitative classifiers which are mostly onomatopoetic and imitate the sound of the noun they are classifying.
Although these categories offer an insightful and general view of Thai classifiers, I believe that there are more categories involved that offers a more in-depth view. As suggested by Piriyawiboon (2010), the author introduces more categories as listed below.
Measure words
Partitives
Adverbial partitives
Classifiers
Animate nouns
Inanimate nouns
Collectives and type classifiers
Repeaters
The final category of repeaters is one that I find incredibly fascinating. I hadn’t realised its characteristic being a native speaker myself, however, when I came across this phenomenon once again it has made me realise that is a truly unique to Thai language.
Classifiers that are repeaters appear in noun phrases such as this:
In my opinion, it is quite difficult to distinguish the role or the requirements of repeater classifiers, thus I have looked at multiple approaches and will attempt to explore this phenomenon. As shown in the example above, repeaters are classifiers that have the same form as their head noun (Placzek, 1978). Adam and Conklin (1974) have suggested that: “repeaters, whole or partial, classify only themselves or compounds of which they are a constituent.” According to them, one way to distinguish what nouns can be under the ‘repeater’ category is the fact that almost all container-related nouns are repeaters. Furthermore, they suggest that a semantic factor that distinguishes repeaters from all the other categories or types of classifiers is the fact that they can be considered as ‘one-place predicates’. This means that the classifier can convey a comprehensive meaning and be understood clearly without requiring another noun to support it or complete the meaning. In contrast, the classifiers in other categories are labelled as ‘two-place predicates’ since they need other nouns to support it in order to make the phrase or sentence a grammatical one.
Analysis of the widespread use of classifier ‘tua’
‘Tua’ translates literally to the noun ‘body’ in Thai. However, what I find particularly intriguing about the use of this classifier is the fact that the category of nouns that it classifies can almost be deemed as rather random and unpredictable. Haas (1965) has listed over 120 items in which ‘tua’ can classify.
Moreover, since there are so many classifiers in Thai, it is very common for native speakers to make mistakes and use the wrong one, especially in spoken language. Thus, I’ve noticed that classifiers such as ‘tua' and ‘an’ are the two most commonly referred to when we are unsure of the correct classifier to use.
According to Noss (1964), ‘tua’ is a unit classifier since it bears a special relationship with the concrete noun. DeLancey (1986) illustrated that initially ‘tua’ was used as a noun that refers to animals. However, its use has expanded depending on the context, in conventional uses it includes: all animals, table, chair, doll, ghost, trousers, mannequin, shirt, skirt, letter, and number. But in more colloquial use, it is used to refer to: cigarettes, guitar, tape recorder, towel, university course, microphone, underwear, and bathing suit (Carpenter, 1986). All in all, there are around 120 items that can be classified by ‘tua’ (Haas, 1965) the connection between all of these items lie beyond the fact that they are all non-human elements, but a similarity is the fact that they all have ‘legs’ of some sort and some connections may be due to the similarity of the garments. However, personally I disagree with Noss since I believe that ‘tua’ fits more appropriately under the general classifier category. This is because it has no relationship with concrete or mass nouns, and although there is a rule under which ‘tua’ can classify, generally the nouns they classify are quite random.
However, Carpenter (1987) provided quite an in-depth and more tangible diagram that conveyed the usage of ‘tua’. He also proposed that although the relationship between nouns and classifiers are not predictable, they are somewhat semantically motivated.
This diagram indicates that the use of ‘tua’ can be understood by various models: the prototype, the checklist, and the chain. The prototype model explains the group of nouns having some shared features. It is originally used to classify animals with four legs (animals quadruped) but the prototype also predicts a group of nouns that have shared features, for example: animals with no limbs such as snake and fish as well as non-living objects with limbs such as tables and trousers. Additionally, the checklist model suggests a set of required features a noun much possess in order for it to be able to be used with the classifier ‘tua’. Finally, the chain model explains how although a noun may share some features with a different noun that both use ‘tua’ as the classifier, this doesn’t necessarily mean they all share the same features and resemble each other. For instance, the noun for skirt can also be used with ‘tua’ since it shares functions with trousers (Deepadung, 1997). Comparison to other Asian languages
I will start off by comparing the syntactic structure of classifiers in Thai in comparison to other languages in Asia. As seen below, the structure of the languages in relation to the placement of the classifiers could be interpreted as almost completely different. However, I noticed two significant similarities between all the languages. First being the fact that the adjectives always precede the noun it is referring to. Moreover, the classifiers also always precede the number being quantified. Nevertheless, the order of these elements in the noun phrases are unlike each other.
Thai and Khmer:
Burmese:
Hmong, Malay and Vietnamese:
Furthermore, I will focus specifically on the similarities and differences between Thai, Japanese and Chinese classifiers. I will compare the uses of classifiers when accompanied by a demonstrative.
Like previously mentioned (page 4 and 5), the use of classifier is optional when a noun is accompanied by an adjective or a demonstrative. However, this is not the case if the objective of the noun phrase is for the noun to refer to a specific object- then the classifier must be present. This is a similar case in Mandarin Chinese, however it is less flexible since a classifier is needed in a noun phrase. In contrast to these two languages, a demonstrative (this/that) alone suffices for reference, and a classifier is not obligatory in Japanese.
In terms of omitting the classifier, in Thai omission of the classifier is possible, but it changes the meaning of the phrase. In the example below, the meaning of the noun phrase without the classifier changes in terms of specificity. The inclusion of the classifier ‘bay’ refers to these specific two hundred cans. In contrast, in Japanese, the omission of a classifier is only applicable when a large, round number is present. But in Mandarin Chinese, a classifier is obligatory since the number directly modifies the count noun.