Numeral Classifiers in Lao (Southwestern Tai)
Bree Smith
Within the realm of nominal classification, the Lao language plays host to a wide-ranging class of numeral
classifiers. Each noun coincides with a predetermined classifier based on a categorization such as size, shape,
or purpose. Previous work detailing Lao classification (Enfield, 2007) has found that there are upwards of
100 members within this class. Furthermore, this is an open class, consisting of terms which serve as referents
to categories of nouns (i.e. small bodies of water or animals) or the more restricted repeaters. Examples of
taxonomic classifiers are seen in 1 and 2 and an example of a repeater in 3:
(1) kh Oi-mi
mit^
nOi
1SG-POSS knife
sam
small 3
du’aN
CLF.knife
‘I have three small knives.’
(2) kh Oi
1SG
mi
galot^
hã
”tOn
to have
carrot
5
CLF.chunk
‘I have five pieces of carrot.’
(3) kh Oi pEn
caUkh ON
1SG COP(as a term of ownership) possess
hã:n
sON
hã:n
store
2
CLF.store
‘I own two stores.’
The current research regarding numeral classifiers in Lao has been limited to that of Enfield’s Grammar
of Lao (2007). No further description has been published focusing solely on numeral classifiers. This paper
offers a discussion of Lao numeral classifiers not observed in Enfield’s preliminary findings.
These pieces of data have been obtained through elicited utterances from a well-educated native speaker
of Lao. The language consultant is from the same city as those in Enfield’s research. However, multiple
discrepancies have been observed between the data of Enfield (2007) and the tokens reported within this
paper. I will address these discrepancies by way of examination between the similarities of the Lao language
and the closely related Thai language. Past work on Thai numeral classifiers (Haas 1942, Singhapreecha
2001) gives evidence that some classifiers found in Lao correlate with those in Thai and thus shed light on
previously unexplained phenomena within Lao.
References
Enfield, N. J. 2007. Nominal Classification. A Grammar of Lao. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Haas, Mary R. 1942. “The Use of Numeral Classifiers in Thai.” Language 18.3. 201-205.
Singhapreecha, Pornsiri. 2001. “Thai Classifiers and the Structure of Complex Thai Nominals.” 15th Pacific
Asia Conference on Language, Information, and Communication. City University of Hong Kong:
Language Information Sciences Research Center.