[tied] Re: Utility of Articles (was: Rise of the Feminine)

From: Anthony Appleyard
Message: 32446
Date: 2004-05-02

--- "Âàäèì Ïîíàðÿäîâ" <ponaryad@...> wrote:
> I think that it is possible to describe English as a language that
> needs classifiers with uncountable nouns ...

Likely one reason why in modern Chinese classifiers with numbers is
compulsory, is because as ancient Chinese slowly evolved into modern
Chinese, it became so massively plagued with homophony that (for
example) numbers must be followed by classifiers to distinguish
number words from other words which are pronounced the same.