Classifier (linguistics)

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A classifier (abbreviated clf or cl) is a word or affix that accompanies nouns and can be considered to "classify" a noun depending on some characteristics (e.g. humanness, animacy, sex, shape, social status) of its referent. Classifiers in this sense are specifically called noun classifiers because some languages in Papua as well as the Americas have verbal classifiers which categorize the referent of its argument. In languages that have classifiers, they are often used when the noun is being counted, that is, when it appears with a numeral. In such languages, a phrase such as "three people" is often required to be expressed as "three X (of) people", where X is a classifier appropriate to the noun for "people"; compare to "three blades of grass". Classifiers that appear next to a numeral or a quantifier are particularly called numeral classifiers. They play an important role in certain languages, especially East and Southeast Asian languages, including Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese...

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