Lexicalization of mensural classifiers in Chinese.

This article delineates the internal structure of mensural classifiers in Manda-rin Chinese by arguing that each mensural classifier in Mandarin Chinese contains a silent semantic primitive SCALE, which can be modified by a restricted set of gradable adjectives. Viewing this silent scalar element as a grammatical object explains away a set of puzzles in Chinese linguistics, including the restricted use of adjectives before mensural classifiers, the seem-ingly free distributional patterns of verbal measure phrases, and the number indeterminacy in the verb reduplication construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]