Monster character profiling and Chinese classifier cognition: linguistic and conceptual perspectives

In this research, we explored the construal of mythical creatures created out of ordinary animals by approaching the selection of Chinese classifiers zhi and ge. Monster figures as such are viewed ambiguously as an animal or as a novel entity. From the lexico-semantic perspective, we surveyed the co-occurrences of these two classifiers with two Chinese labels commonly used for monsters: guaishou and guaiwu, which provide lexical cues for the finely nuanced difference in (non-)/animate readings respectively. From the conceptual perspective, we examined the acceptability as to the uses of these two classifiers for the monster figures, the structures of which incurred different effects of novelty. We found that the (non-)/animal-like interpretation is encoded by zhi and ge at both the linguistic and conceptual layers. The findings of our work have implications for the relation of language and thought, our understanding of fictional world entities, and our understanding of classifier cognition.