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CLASSIFIERS IN BENGALI

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Rácová A.

Asian and African Studies

2007

vol. 16

issue 2

125 - 137

Classifiers are affixes that categorize entities into common classes on the basis of shared properties. They are characteristic features of many Asian, American, and African languages. Though typically not occurring in Indo-European languages, they can be found in the Eastern group of New Indo-Aryan languages, namely Assamese, Oriya and Bengali. Emaneau pointed out that they probably started to be used under the influence of Southeast Asian languages in India. According to Chatterji in Bengali they were in use as early as its middle period (1200-1800). This study attempts to provide information on the present occurrence and usage of classifiers in Bengali. The conclusions are based on the analysis of texts by seven Bengali authors. The relevant affixes are regarded as classifiers when they are attached to a noun and as numeral classifiers when they are attached to numerals. In the latter case they occur in various syntactic constructions. Besides their main function of classifying objects into classes Bengali classifiers serve as definitives, substantivizators and noun substitutes.

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1 Asian and African Studies

1 Rácová A.

1 2007

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CLASSIFIERS IN BENGALI