A Comparative Study of the General Classifier Gè and Its Near-Synonyms in Modern Chinese——Taking Gè, Zhǒng, and Jiàn as Examples

As the only general classifier in modern Chinese, the attribute of Gè (个) inevitably leads to semantic overlap with other classifiers resulting in misuse, which is worthy of further research. This study conducts a comparative analysis of Gè and its near-synonyms, Zhǒng (种) and Jiàn (件), based on corpus research. It shows that Gè and Jiàn have co-occurrence contexts when measuring nouns about events, but the use of Gè is usually limited to colloquial language, while Jiàn is applicable to both colloquial and written language. The noun Shìjiàn (事件) ‘event’ is usually modified by Gè not by Jiàn. There is no semantic overlap between Gè and Zhǒng and they cannot be used interchangeably. Some nouns can appear simultaneously in the Num/RNum+Gè/Zhǒng+N structure, and choosing which classifier is only determined by quantitative or categorical concepts they expressed.