Classifying Correspondence in Japanese and Korean

In this paper we present an analysis of the ways Japanese and Korean categorize long-distance communication, for example, over the telephone, or through email, fax or letters. In Korean and Japanese, numeral classifiers are used to overtly categorize such communicative acts. Japanese uses more classifiers in this field than Korean, and so there is more possible variation in classifier use. We use the framework of Pustejovsky’s (1995) Generative Lexicon to make clear the differences between kind and shape classifiers, and explain the variation in classifier use by showing how different classifiers select for different features of lexical entries.