What's the difference between [classifiers] and [measure-word]?

Question

It looks like classifiers has the same meaning as measure-word. Perhaps we don't need both of them.

Question: What's the difference between [classifiers] and [measure-word]?

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Bump: Now I have a diamond, I believe I can just make classifiers a synonym of measure-word instantly. (I.e., keep measure-word.) Any objections?

Answer 1

Vote for merge.

The usage info for classifiers says:

Classifier, or Measure Word, is a word or morpheme used along with numbers and countable nouns to denote the quantity of a given object, represented by a noun.

which suggesting that they are the same.

Also the wikipedia page for mesure word has such an introduction:

This article is about measure words in general. For measure words in Chinese, see Chinese classifier. For measure words in Japanese, see Japanese counter word.

which also suggest they are the same thing in Chinese.

Answer 2

I proposed a tag synonym to make classifiers (25 Q's) a synonym of measure-word (41 Q's). My impression is that "measure word" is a more familiar term.

*** This needs votes here *** or nothing will happen. It's a useful synonym.

The questions tagged classifiers are:

1. [update 15 July 2020] Purpose of the reduplication in 一步一步地往上爬

2. Nouns that don't require a measure word

3. How to say "this" in "This is my third time in Taiwan"?

4. How to correctly use "多" to say "more than"?

5. The classifier 一把for 手機

6. Classifier choice for 荚谜

7. Is classifier/measure word required after demonstrative?

8. Where to put the adjective when asking for something that comes in multiple sizes?

9. 个 ge usage plus 每 mei

10. What classifier imply a volume?

11. What's the correct classifier for `房子`?

12. Is there a difference in meaning between 那年夏天 and 那个夏天

13. List of classifiers for Cantonese?

14. 條 or 個 as classifier for road (路) in Cantonese?

15. Purpose of duplicating measure words?

16. When to use "下一个" and when just "下一" to translate English "next"?

17. Which term and which counter to use when ordering simple meals?

18. Why is 汉子 measured in 条?

19. Is there any authoritative works related to measure words?

20. Measure words for disrespect

21. Measure word usage with 这个/那个

22. Classifiers for rooms

23. Which classifier for window (窗户) is regularly used?

24. Syntax of 'Number Number MeasureWord'

25. Why 回 is used in 回事 instead of 件事?

26. Learning how to use measure / count words properly

Some of them even use the term "measure word" in the title.

Answer 3

Okay, I merged them, and changed the tag wiki (feel free to edit this to something better):

For questions about measure words and classifiers (量词), e.g., 个, 双, 张

I'm confident that few people (if anyone) will object to me merging these tags. I feel it's clear from the examples that they're used interchangeably. However, I don't know for sure whether to call it classifiers or measure-word.

For now, I'll choose measure-word because:

• I feel beginners are often taught that 个 etc. is a measure word, so they're not going to think to use classifiers, however...
• I spoke with Tang Ho about this, and (assuming I've understood things correctly) some people are instead taught that 一个 is a measure word in which 个 is the classifier (this may even be the linguistically "correct" terminology). Nevertheless, the people who understand this distinction can probably understand using measure-word as an approximation for classifiers for the purposes of tagging.

Basically, it's my best guess at the time of writing. If the community thinks classifiers is better, it's easy to rename (but please create a meta post).