A Comparison of Chinese and Thai Classifiers and New Nouns Collocations

Abstract

This research focused on a comparison of Chinese and Thai classifiers and new nouns collocations in order to find their similarities and the differences. The Comparative Analysis and Zhang Cheng Model (张赪, 2009) of noun classification were applied to analyze the classifier usage. The researcher collected 30 new nouns and divided them into 6 categories: 1) computer and accessories; 2) Internet; 3) smart phone;    4) people; 5) places; and 6) transportation. The results showed that both Thai and Chinese classifiers could be matched with many kinds of new nouns. Chinese classifiers could be matched with many new nouns both living and non-living ones while Thai classifiers were clearly divided according to their usage between living and non-living things. Therefore, the Chinese classifiers usage was more flexible. Thai usually used the English names of some new nouns as their classifiers but Chinese classifiers were used with new nouns rather than using their English names as classifiers.