ABSTRACT: This paper investigates the associative marker gai in Hakka complex noun phrases, exploring its syntax and semantics. It is argued that gai constitutes the formal correlate of a CLASS feature that linguistically identifies a class, or a subkind, to a kind denoted by the modified noun. The gai marker hosts a functional projection ClassP in the nominal structure and is shown to encode the concept of partitivity, namely denoting a potentially specific subset of a larger set. The analysis of gai as a class marker is shown to fit with the cross-linguistic picture regarding classification, partitivity and nominal ellipsis. 摘要: 本文研究了客家复杂名词短语中的链接标记"个"，探讨其语法和语 义。本文认为"个"构成了CLASS特征的形式关联，该特征在语言上 用来标示被修饰名词所指涉之类别下的次类别或子类别。此"个"标 记在名词组结构中位于功能词组ClassP，并表达部分性之语义概念， 即用来指示较大集合中的殊指子集。本文更进一步指出此分析法符合 有关分类、部分性和名词组删略等现象之跨语言视野。
Hsiao‐hung Iris Wu (Thu,) studied this question.