Does Chinese Need Two Structures for Classifiers? A Case Study

Abstract

The syntactic structure of the classifiers in Chinese has been assumed or argued to be left-branching, right-branching or mixed. This article examines three facts-number-classfier-de, the use of duo ‘extra, more’ and the conditional deletion of number––which are regarded by Xuping Li (2013) as evidence for the mixed structures. It is shown that the purported facts are partial and, when more related facts are taken into consideration, they together are equally compatible with an exclusively left-branching structure and thus cannot serve as support for a mixed structure analysis. Three kinds of arguments are reviewed in the last section which fare favorably with the left-branching structure.