Measure words are used in linguistics to denote the amount of uncountable nouns. Countable nouns do not require measure words, while mass nouns do. Some languages use numeric classifiers for countable nouns, which differ from measure words. Mandarin has over a hundred classifiers.
In linguistics, a measure word is a word used to denote the amount of a particular noun. Measure words are applied to nouns that are uncountable. In some cases, a measure word can be a specific unit of measure. For example, in the sentence “five tons of flax,” “tons” is a measure word.
In English, not all nouns require measure words to indicate quantity. For example, it is possible to say “five people” without having to specify a measure word. These nouns are said to be countable, i.e. each noun denotes a discrete unit. Names of this type are also known as “name count”.
Conversely, other names are known as mass names. A mass name indicates something that is continuous rather than discrete. For example, “milk” is a mass name because there is no inherent discrete division in milk. The contrast between a count and a mass name is seen in the phrase “three cookies and three glasses of milk.” “Cookies”, a countable noun, does not require a measure word, while “milk”, a mass noun, requires the measure word “glasses”.
This distinction between countable and uncountable nouns varies slightly from language to language. In some languages, countable nouns also require the addition of another word when describing a number of that noun. This type of word is called a numeric classifier. Some speakers also use the term “measure word” to describe this type of classifier. In fact, while there are many similarities between number classifiers and measure words, they are slightly different in important ways.
Numeric classifiers occur frequently in some languages, but not in others. For example, all forms of Chinese make extensive use of numeric classifiers. It is very difficult to translate these words into English, as they have no exact grammatical equivalent. For example, in Mandarin Chinese, the phrase “a person” contains three words: the word for “one,” the word for “person,” and the numeric classifier for persons, a word that has no direct English translation. Mandarin has over a hundred of these classifiers.
Many sources refer to this type of numeric classifier as a measure word, and the two word types are somewhat similar. The main difference is that numeral classifiers apply to countable nouns. Their grammatical function is different from that of measure words; measure words make uncountable nouns countable, while numeric classifiers are needed to count count nouns.
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