Classifiers in Spoken and in Signed Languages: How to Know More

Almost all languages have some grammatical means for the linguistic categorization o f noun referents. ‘Classifiers’ is an umbrella label for the continuum o f noun categorization devices, from lexical numeral classifiers o f South-East Asia to highly grammaticalized gender agreement classes o f Indo-European languages. They provide a unique insight into how the world is categorized through language in terms o f universal semantic parameters involving humanness, animacy, gender, shape, form, consistency, orientation in space and functional properties o f entities.