Thai Classifiers and the Structure of Complex Thai Nominals

This paper aims to posit a functional category for Thai classifiers and demonstrate the analysis of Thai complex nominals adopting the antisymmetry framework (Kayne 1994). It proposes that Thai classifiers have an independently functional status and project the Classifier Phrase (ClassP) basically because they work in the same way as agreement. Evidence supporting their functional status includes properties of classifiers in forming their own word class distinct from the category of nouns, their non-modificational property by adjectives, and multiple occurrences. The underlying structure of Thai nominals is constructed in terms of the DP analysis. To derive a Thai nominal word order, it is argued that classifiers features are strong and there exist a combination of raising operations regulated by asymmetrical c-command relation (Kayne 1994) as well as feature checking (Chomsky 1995). The analysis suggests that Thai nominals possess a commonly underlying head-initial structure in which movement plays a key role in deriving the surface word order.