Understanding intra-system dependencies: Classifiers in Lao

We are fascinated by the significant but understudied analytic issue of when different linguistic systems (particularly morphosyntactic features) should be recognized in a given language. In the most straightforward instances we can see that two systems are orthogonal (logically independent of each other), and so each should be postulated in an adequate analysis. Thus traditional accounts of languages like Italian, which recognize a number system and a gender system, are fully justified. There are instances which are a little less straightforward. There may be dependencies between different features, for example in German there is neutralization of gender in the plural, but we would still have good grounds for recognizing two systems. Turning to the specific area of nominal classification, we see that it is certainly an interesting and challenging area of linguistics, but that after a long research tradition we still do not have a clear picture of the different types of classification device that languages employ, much less of their interaction with and dependencies on each other in individual languages. In order to make progress we should undertake analyses of key languages. In some languages we find, arguably, a gender system together with a classifier system, and the interest of the analysis is to determine whether indeed there are two systems of nominal classification or whether the two candidate systems are in fact inter-dependent. In this chapter,