Multiple Classifier Constructions in Chinese: Semantic Representations and Interpretation Mechanism

The exact nature and derivation of patient-subject constructions (PSC) in Chinese are still at dispute in literature. Based on the restriction of manner adverbial modification and the nonexistence of the manner readingof zenme‘how’ observed in Chinese PSC, a morphosyntactic analysis has been provided. We argue that the seeming action verb V in PSC is not a real main verb, but a verbal root to be introduced into the derivation after syntax via external morphological merger. The real main verb of PSC in syntax is a covert light verb ∅BEC, which selects a nominal phrase (NP) as its specifier (Spec) and a resultative phrase (RP) as its complement. BECP is further selected by an aspect (Asp) headle. To satisfy the extended projection principle (EPP), the NP at [Spec, BECP] moves to the [Spec, TP] in syntax. After syntax, the resultative (R) head-moves to ∅BECat the phonological form (PF) to satisfy the phonological requirement of ∅BEC, forming R-∅BEC; then, a bare verbal root merges with R-∅BECat PF to denote the manner of the change of state. Due to the phonological requirement ofle, V-R-∅BEChead-moves tole, producing the right order of PSC. The two elided forms of PSC can be derived similarly. This research suggests that covert light verbs and morphology may play an interactive role in the derivation of some “typical” constructions in Chinese.

As linguistic research continues to navigate the complex interplay between structure, meaning, and pedagogy, increasing attention is being paid to how languages are learned, represented, and taught across diverse sociocultural contexts. From script acquisition and intercultural teaching practices to the analysis of morphosyntactic and semantic structures, contemporary studies are expanding the scope of inquiry to include both traditional and emerging perspectives. This issue brings together five contributions that reflect this multifaceted engagement, with a particular focus on East Asian languages and their learners in multilingual and historically rich environments. We are pleased to present the summer 2025 issue of Acta Linguistica Asiatica, which features five original research articles exploring diverse linguistic phenomena in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean language contexts. The issue opens with “Multiple Classifier Constructions in Chinese: Semantic Representations and Interpretation Mechanism” by YANG Yongzhong. Drawing on a critical re-evaluation of prior analyses, the author proposes an alternative semantic framework for interpreting multiple classifier constructions, focusing on distributive mechanisms and definiteness. Martina JEMELKOVÁ contributes the article “Chinese Binomes: A Graphical or Phonological Construct?”, which investigates disyllabic morphemes in Chinese that include sinograms with no independent meaning. This corpus-based study illuminates both the aesthetic and structural dimensions of binomes, offering new insights into their typological classification and linguistic function. In “Persian Learners Mastering Kanji: Strategies, Use, and Efficiency,” Zeinab SHEKARABI and Fatemeh TAJFIROOZ explore kanji learning strategies among Persian-speaking learners of Japanese. The paper categorizes cognitive and mnemonic approaches across learning stages and genders, highlighting a critical disconnect between strategy frequency and perceived effectiveness. The next contribution, “Fostering the Critical Perspective in Intercultural Competence: The Role of the L2 Japanese Teacher” by Magdalena VASSILEVA, addresses the integration of critical pedagogical frameworks into Japanese language instruction. The study emphasizes the role of the teacher as an intercultural mediator and details an institutional model for developing critical intercultural awareness through reflexive teaching practices. Finally, Kalina offers a comparative study of historical Korean language textbooks used at the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies. “Comparative Analysis of Historic Grade 1 Korean Textbooks at the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies” contrasts materials from pre- and post-liberation periods, highlighting differences in pedagogy, orthography, and linguistic content, and underscoring their historical and educational value. Editors and Editorial Board invite the regular and new readers to engage with the content, to question, challenge, and reflect. We hope you have a pleasant read full of inspiration and a rise of new research ideas inspired by these papers. Editors

We describe a two-layer architecture for supporting semantic interpretation and domain reasoning in dialogue systems. Building system that supports both semantic interpretation and domain reasoning in a transparent and well-integrated manner is an unresolved problem because of the diverging requirements of the semantic representations used in contextual interpretation versus the knowledge representations used in domain reasoning. We propose an architecture that provides both portability and efficiency in natural language interpretation by maintaining separate semantic and domain knowledge representations, and integrating them via an ontology mapping procedure. The ontology mapping is used to obtain representations of utterances in a form most suitable for domain reasoners and to automatically specialize the lexicon. The use of a linguistically motivated parser for producing semantic representations for complex natural language sentences facilitates building portable semantic interpretation components as well as connections with domain reasoners. Two evaluations demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach: we show that a small number of mapping rules are sufficient for customizing the generic semantic representation to a new domain, and that our automatic lexicon specialization technique improves parser speed and accuracy.

The classifier-noun construction in Mandarin is different from the numeral-classifier-noun construction in the aspects of syntactic distribution and semantic interpretation. This paper analyzes the syntactic classifier-noun construction in the perspective of Generative Grammar. Under the discussion of the morphosyntactic property of Chinese classifiers, the paper argues that in the classifier-noun constructions, the classifier tends to develop toward the indefinite article which can be explained under the framework of DP.

This article approaches the study of gender marking in early European Spanish and is based on the analysis of the determiners produced by three children, one monolingual and two bilinguals, in spontaneous interactions. Mastering gender marking in this language implies having acquired the knowledge of the features of the D head, the architecture of determiner phrases (DPs) and the DP internal agreement mechanisms that make the head, its adjuncts and its specifier share such features. Larranaga and Guijarro Fuentes (henceforth L & GF) assume that target-like DPs in Spanish are complex structures containing several functional projections between the DP projection and the noun phrase (NP), in which number and gender features are checked.The authors observe that children do not undergo any initial stage of default gender during the process of acquiring the structure of DP. As a first result, monolinguals and bilinguals behave similarly in this respect, as no exclusive overgeneralisation of the masculine gender is attested in any of the three children. In contrast, the higher amount of errors as well as the longer duration of the period of erroneous productions in the bilingual corpora are interpreted as evidence for a delayed acquisition of the internal architecture of the Spanish DP, attributable to some effect of the other language of the bilinguals, Basque, which lacks gender specification as well as DP internal agreement.The originality of this article lies basically in the detailed description and quantification of early gender marking production by children acquiring two languages for which not many longitudinal or cross-sectional studies on early DPs are available. Moreover, the approach to the contrastive description of DP architectures of both unrelated languages is a field few have explored from the theoretical perspective. Furthermore, the theoretical framework in which the results are discussed contrasts with most of the previous studies on early gender marking in Spanish, developed following non-generative or pre-minimalist models.In the introductory section, L & GF review the descriptive work dealing with the relation between grammatical and natural gender in Spanish. In addition to the examples of mismatch in natural versus grammatical gender mentioned, this section would also benefit from distinguishing between the so-called genero comun, 'common gender', in which the determiner is solely responsible for marking the difference between male and female (el/la pianista, 'the-M/the-F pianist'), and the genero epiceno, in which the N is indistinctively marked for the one gender option, regardless of the natural gender of their reference (F marking in la joven victima, 'the - male or female - young victim' or M in el bebe lloron, 'the - male or female - cry-baby'). Mention of grammatical mismatch such as the change of determiner in cacophonic contexts (*la agua clara, 'the-F water-F clear-F', vs. el agua clara, 'the-M water-F clear-F') would add cohesion to the text, as examples of this kind are reported in children's corpora. At this point, some discussion of the formal, inherent character and of the (un)interpretability of the gender feature in Spanish would not be redundant.An important topic in the argumentation on the (dis)similarities between monolingual and bilin- gual acquisition is the potential interlinguistic effect of the other language. Structurally different configurations of DP in Basque and Spanish turn out to be the central subject of the first section. L & GF adopt recent theoretical proposals on the complexity of DPs for Spanish and Basque languages, which allow the authors to delimit the field for their study of the potential interlinguistic influence in children's acquisition of gender and the structure of DP in Spanish. The presence (Spanish) versus the absence of Class P (Basque) as responsible for the corresponding feature checking by attracting N to Class in Spanish versus N remaining in situ in Basque constitutes an attractive field for testing interlinguistic influence. …

This article provides an overview of what is known as the noun phrase (NP) versus determiner phrase (DP) debate. I first revisit the arguments by which a language would be assigned an NP or rather a DP structure, followed by the proper characterisation, function and features of determiners. I then summarise the typological endeavour of Bošković, surveying some of the syntactic and semantic correlates of the NP versus DP parameter and applying four of the diagnostics Bošković developed to Turkish as well as providing examples from other languages such as Korean, Vietnamese and Lithuanian. For each diagnostic, I provide some counterarguments that cast doubt on the validity of those diagnostics. I conclude, in line with Kornfilt (2017, 2018) that proposing correlations between an NP or a DP status of the nominal domain and a certain clustering of syntactic or semantic properties should be abandoned.

The word “pronoun” can refer to many things; its name suggests that it stands for or refers to another noun. Personal, reflexive, reciprocal, relative, and indefinite pronouns indeed replace nouns, or more accurately noun phrases (NPs) or determiner phrases (DPs). Possessive, demonstrative, and interrogative pronouns can either refer to an NP or DP on their own or modify a noun to form part of a DP, and are then referred to as determiners. There are also “preforms” that stand for a prepositional phrase, adjective phrase, and verb phrase; the proforms will not be discussed here. From a diachronic perspective, there are many generalities in how pronouns arise. Thus, third-person personal pronouns often develop from demonstratives, and reflexives develop from nouns related to “person” or “self.” Since a pronoun is not stable diachronically, languages vary between whether pronouns are arguments, topics, or agreement and whether they are pronouns, clitics, or affixes. Cross-linguistic studies show that (subject) agreement is more frequent than pronouns and it is therefore important to consider the status of this (pronominal) agreement as opposed to full pronouns. If a pronoun stands for a noun phrase, the question arises as to what its syntactic category is, i.e., is it a D with an empty noun or a DP/NP? The answer is that it varies cross-linguistically. Pronouns can be specialized for the person, number, and gender of the referent and are, in many languages, marked by case for its grammatical function and for level of formality. Looking from a typological perspective, it is obvious that these marking are not arbitrary; for instance, third person pronouns are more likely to indicate gender. Pronouns can mark politeness and inclusiveness and exclusiveness of the addressee. The syntax and morphology of pronouns centers around the question if they are a D or a DP or somewhere in between. This question is obviously related to their status as full argument or as agreement marker. Languages also differ as to what features are encoded and how. The pragmatics and semantics of pronouns are also complex. In many languages, the topicality of the noun phrase is marked by the use of a full nominal, a pronoun, or a zero form. For instance, a pronoun may be left out (pro-drop in Romance) when the noun phrase referred to is highly topical and an emphatic pronoun is used when the topic is switched. Finally, references on acquisition and retention have been provided.

The acquisition of semantic knowledge is paramount for any application that requires a deep understanding of natural language text. Motivated by the problem of building a noun phrase-level semantic parser and adapting it to various applications, such as machine translation and multilingual question answering, in this paper we present a domain-independent model for noun phrase semantic interpretation. We investigate the problem based on cross-linguistic evidence from a set of four Romance languages: Spanish, Italian, French, and Romanian. The focus on Romance languages is well motivated. It is generally the case that English noun phrases translate into constructions of the form P N in Romance languages where, as we will show, the P (preposition) varies in ways that correlate with the semantics. Thus, based on a set of 22 semantic interpretation categories (such as PART-WHOLE, AGENT, POSSESSION) we present empirical observations regarding the distribution of these semantic categories in a cross-lingual corpus and their mapping to various syntactic constructions in English and Romance. Furthermore, given a training set of English noun phrases along with their translations in the four Romance languages, our algorithm automatically learns classification rules and applies them to unseen noun phrase instances for semantic interpretation. Experimental results are compared against a state-of-the-art model reported in the literature.

This paper examines multiple-classifier constructions in Chinese, in which two classifiers are stacked in one nominal position. The following three properties are found in these constructions: (i) strict linear ordering between different types of classifiers, (ii) definiteness/specificity of the lower DP, and (iii) obligatory non-distributive readings. The properties of multiple-classifier constructions allow us to study the syntax and semantics of nominal expressions in Chinese from a novel point of view. We argue that, syntactically, and against the bare NP analysis in Chierchia (in: Rothstein S (ed) Events and grammar, Kluwer, Dordrecht, pp 53–103, 1998a, Nat Lang Semant 6:339–405, 1998b) and the Classifier Phrase analysis in Cheng and Sybesma (Linguist Inq 30:509–542, 1999; in: Cinque G, Kayne R (ed) The Oxford handbook of comparative syntax, Oxford University Press, pp 259–292, 2005), from the properties of multiple-classifier constructions, a universal DP analysis is favored (as in Li, Linguist Inq 29: 693–702, 1998). Incorporating the theories in Zamparelli (in: Alexiadou A, Wilder C (eds) Linguistics today: possessors, predicates and movement in the determiner phrase, vol 22, John Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp 259–301, 1998) and Dayal (Linguist Philos 27:393–450, 2004), we demonstrate that a generalized Chierchian approach (without his semantic parameter) best captures the syntax–semantics mappings within nominal expressions in Chinese. From a compositional semantic point of view, we argue that multiple-classifier constructions should be treated as an instance of partitive construction with an empty partitive head. The hypothesis of an empty partitive head not only accounts for the properties of the multiple-classifier constructions, but it also offers explanations for the asymmetry of partitive readings in Chinese relative clauses.

This chapter investigates the Turkish Noun Phrase (NP), with emphasis on the structural position of possessors, demonstratives, numerals, and adjectives as well as the interpretation of possessors in different contexts. It investigates ellipsis within Turkish NPs, which turns out to be a particularly useful tool for probing NP structure, due to rather strong constraints on such ellipsis that Turkish displays. The chapter starts by considering how Turkish, an article-less language, fares with respect to Boskovic's generalizations regarding Determiner Phrase (DP)/NP languages. It shows that Turkish patterns with NP, not DP languages, which has an important impact on the analysis based on c-command tests, linear order, interpretation, and ellipsis of NP-internal elements. The chapter establishes an outline of NP structure in Turkish, based on c-command tests, word order, and the interpretation of possessors. It concludes that a functional projection is present above NP in classifier and possibly predicate constructions. Keywords: article-less language; Boskovic's generalizations; determiner phrase (DP) languages; Turkish Noun Phrase (NP)

Among some of the recent syntactic developments, the noun phrase has been reanalyzed as a determiner phrase (DP). This study analyses the Ekegusii determiner phrase (DP) with an inquiry into the relationship between agreement of the INFL (sentence) and concord in the noun phrase (determiner phrase). It hypothesizes that the Ekegusii sentential Agreement has a symmetrical relationship with the Ekegusii Determiner Phrase internal concord and feature checking theory and full interpretation (FI) in the Minimalist Program is adequate in the analysis of the internal structure of the Ekegusii DP. In employing the Minimalist Program (MP), the study shall first seek to establish the domain of the NP in the Ekegusii DP and go ahead to do an investigation into the adequacy of the Minimalist Program in analyzing the Ekegusii DP. This study is also geared towards establishing the order of determiners in the DP between the D-head and the NP complement. The study concludes that the principles of feature checking and full interpretation in the minimalist program are mutually crucial in ensuring that Ekegusii constructions (DP and even the sentence) are grammatical (converge). This emphasizes the fact that the MP is adequate in Ekegusii DP analysis.

This chapter discusses two functional morphemes written l(a)- and le and pronounced [l(a)] and [le] which have developed in Modern Martinike as definiteness markers of a sort, alongside the better known enclitic definite determiner. It summarises Lobner's distinction between semantic and pragmatic definiteness. The chapter argues that the phrasal enclitic determiner must be semantically characterised as a pragmatic definiteness marker, in Lobner's sense. It presents the morphological, distributional and semantic properties of l(a)- N and le +NP. The chapter recapitulates and argues that l(a)- N and le +NP in Martinike instantiate a class of determiner phrases (DPs) characterised semantically as a subtype of semantic definites denoting individual concepts, and syntactically, by the occurrence of a special functional projection distinct from noun phrase (NP). It concludes that the properties brought out for la -N and le +NP in Martinike lead us to identify l(a)- and le as markers of semantic definiteness, in Lobner's sense. Keywords: determiner phrases (DPs); enclitic definite determiner; Lobner's sense; Modern Martinike; noun phrase (NP); pragmatic definiteness; semantic definiteness

The existence of determiner phrases and their different manifestations in number, gender, and case have been studied and proved in English in many research studies. Many languages other than English need this investigation to establish a sound hypothesis about the universal language structure. This study was an attempt to find out the structure of the determiner phrase in the Pashto. It also investigated the equivalents of the English determiner phrase in the Pashto. It used the spoken corpus of Pashto as primary data. In addition, short stories and novels written by literary writers in the Pashto have been used as secondary data. Moreover, intensive group discussion with native speakers of Pashto has also been utilized as another secondary data source. The minimalist program was used to guide and understand the syntactic structure of languages. It was followed by the determiner phrase hypothesis. The hypothesis states that a noun is headed by its determiner in a noun phrase. Data were analyzed within the framework of the determiner phrase hypothesis. The study shows that a noun in the determiner phrase is not determined by a definite or indefinite article in Pashto. The determiner phrase is inflected for number, gender, and case in Pashto. Furthermore, the Pashto determiner phrase is different from English in terms of medial demonstrative determiners. The study is significant as it provides insight into the structure of the Pashto determiner phrase.

Gender Agreement: a psycholinguistic and aphasia case study.

This chapter provides a theoretical account of antecedence in order to show how the structures of imposters and camouflage determiner phrases (DPs) play a role in determining pronominal agreement. Traditional grammar appealed to a concept of antecedent that relates certain pronominal forms to other expressions. Whereas the traditional notion of antecedent is clearly asymmetric in nature, coindexing gives rise to a symmetric, reflexive relation between DP nodes/occurrences. Moreover, the antecedence relation holds in cases where binding does not exist due to the absence of c-command. The chapter examines antecedence based on the following foundational assumptions: existence, the obligatory antecedence of pronominals, asymmetry, transitivity, and linearity. It argues that pronominal agreement should be stated in terms of antecedence. It also discusses first and second person pronominals, Principles A, B, and C of the binding theory, split antecedence, the relation between antecedence and semantic interpretation, and imposters versus DPs referring to speaker/addressee.