Classifiers in Molsom

There is no work done so far on the classifiers in Molsom. This paper attempts to do so. Crosslinguistically eight classifiers are attested. Of these only the numeral classifiers are used Molsom. Numeral classifiers are used for indicating the semantic classes of concrete nouns in the context of counting. Abstract nouns do not take any classifiers as they defy quantification. The numeral classifier immediately follows the head noun in a noun phrase: [[N] CL Num]NP. A numeral classifier consists of two distinct words which must stay together. In other words, being independent words, they do not get attached to the noun within the noun phrase. Molsom has separate sets of numeral classifiers for count nouns and mass nouns. An exceptional numeral classifier called a repeater is also noticed in the language.