On the putative classifier languages in Europe

Abstract In Eurasia, the hotbed of classifier languages as an areal feature is in East Asia, Southeast Asia, part of eastern India, and a less concentrated cluster in the Middle East and Central Asia. In Europe, only a few languages have been claimed to employ numeral classifiers. Russian, located in Eastern Europe, has a tripartite numeral construction [Num X N], where X’s are considered sortal classifiers by some researchers, e.g., Sussex (1976) and Goto (2012) , and is listed as a classifier language in the World Atlas of Classifier Languages (WACL). However, the status of Russian as a classifier language is controversial. In this paper, we first adopt the definition of classifier languages proposed by Her, Hammarström & Allassonnière-Tang (2022) . We then apply explicit syntactic criteria to evaluate Russian numeral constructions and examine the tripartite [Num X N] structure. Ultimately, our analysis demonstrates that the elements previously identified as sortal classifiers in Russian are in fact measure nouns, and we reject their classification after examining the reasons behind this misidentification. The findings suggest that it would be prudent to reexamine all putative classifier languages in Europe.