Shape Classifiers in Mandarin and Taiwanese – A Psycholinguistic Perspective
北方方言与台湾话中形状量词：心理观察
Chinfa Lien 连金发; Penying Wang 王本瑛

Abstract 摘要
ABSTRACT This paper present a quantitative study of two sets of sortal shape classifiers carrying respectively the semantic feature of [spherical] and [long] in Mandarin and Taiwanese from a psycholinguistic perspective. The first set of shape classifiers consist of ke棵 and li粒 in Mandarin and liap粒 in Taiwanese, while the second set comprises zhi枝, tiau條 and gen根 in Mandarin and ki枝 and tiau條 in Taiwanese. A psycholinguistic experiment conducted on two groups of 20 subjects reveals in quantitative terms patterns of intersection of shape classifiers in each set. We also compare these two sets of classifiers in Mandarin and Taiwanese in terms of semantic features and try to bring the choice of classifiers to bear on the linguistic background of subjects.