Morphosyntactic and Semantic Analysis of Numerals in Nepali Spoken in Assam

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-533-1_32How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Nepali; Numeral; Classifier; Noun; General; Specific

Abstract

This paper provides a detailed description of numeral classifiers in Nepali from both formal and functional perspectives. In Nepali, as in other classifier languages, nouns are categorized using classifiers, which can be divided into two main types: general and specific. General numeral classifiers are primarily used to distinguish human nouns from non-human nouns. Specific numeral classifiers, on the other hand, are used to categorize inanimate nouns according to their sortal (type or kind) and mensural (measurement or quantity) properties.

One key difference between the two is their morphological status. General classifiers are typically bound morphemes, meaning they cannot appear independently and do not carry meaning on their own. Specific classifiers are free morphemes, which have inherent meaning and can sometimes serve as the head of a noun phrase. However, the use of specific classifiers is strictly limited to the nouns they describe, reflecting a close semantic relationship between the classifier and its referent.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

Download article (PDF)

TY  - CONF
AU  - Upasana Devi
AU  - Paramita Purkait
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/12/31
TI  - Morphosyntactic and Semantic Analysis of Numerals in Nepali Spoken in Assam
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Smart Systems and Social Management (ICSSSM-2 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 569
EP  - 579
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-533-1_32
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-533-1_32
ID  - Devi2025
ER  -