The Words Classifiers for Totalities of Birds and Animals

Authors:

Pages: 456-472

Abstract:

In the languages that use classifiers, object classification is done with their help. In languages which have gender systems such as Bulgarian, Russian and Greek syntactic lexemes that indicate partition are known as numeratives, e.g. in Bulgarian – парче, резен, in Russian – голова, пара, in Greek – κομάτι, το. In those languages there are also many classifiers with figurative meaning. The classifiers for groups of birds and animals in the Bulgarian language can be arranged in several groups: first group, for birds and insects; second group, for the “beneficial” for man and agriculture animals; third group, for the “harmful” for man and agriculture animals, and the fourth group, for those animals which do not fall into any of the abovementioned groups. Those classifiers are of various origins – most of them have Slavic root but there are also classifiers of Turkish and Greek origin. Their etymology also varies and in many cases their present-day meaning is completely different from the original one. Their transferability over other realia is also characteristic of these nouns. The variety of classifiers for groups of birds and animals in the contemporary Bulgarian language is not as wide as it has been in the earlier stages of development of our language. Predominant are the classifiers used as quantifiers or as specifiers of a particular noun, e.g. a flock of sheep, a big pack of wolves.

Keywords:

classifiers, numerative, quantifier, specifier, gender system

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