Plant-based numeral classifiers in Tai Dam

Abstract

Inanimate entities are basically classified into different categories based on their physical forms. The geometric shapes themselves are drawn from naturally occurring forms. They refer to plants, in their component parts (Conklin 1981). This paper aims to study numeral classifiers which are plant-based lexemes in Tai Dam or Black Tai spoken in Vietnam. The result of this study shows that classifications of inanimate objects are based on various parts of plants, namely, stalk/stick, leaf, fruit, seed, flower, tuber, and shoot. The extension of plant classes to other semantic domains is evident in the classifications of similarly shaped objects.