A Cognitive Grammar Perspective on the Referential Function of Instrument Verbal Classifiers in Modern Chinese

According to the mainstream view of instrument verbal classifiers (CLvs), they serve as markers of event quantification or classification.Based on a survey of instrument CLvs in a corpus, we propose that they have another important semantic function, namely, achieving reference to events by means of conceptual metonymy.This role is similar to that of the nominalization of action verbs.Specialized Clvs can also be used to refer to events, but they are conceptually dependent, and thus used infrequently.The referential function of instrument CLvs is a distinctive property of Chinese, as opposed to English and other Indo-European languages.