What Counts in the Acquisition and Attrition of Numeral Classifiers?

Abstract

This study compares second language (12) acquisition and attrition sequences of the syntax and semantics of numeral classifier systems in light of considerations of markedness, frequency, and the regression hypothesis. In classifier data elicited from English-speaking adult learners and attriters of two East Asia languages, Japanese and Chinese, we find in the attrition of both languages, in both syntax and semantics, a regression of the acquisition sequence. An implicational semantic scale, the Numeral Classifer Accessibility Hierarchy, cOinciding closely with the relative frequencies of the classifiers in input, appears to provide a path of least resistance for the learning and the loss of the semantic systems.